Enticed

It's almost painful when I'm not writing. When I'm not putting into words all the things my heart is feeling, I'm somewhat...lost. Or a little incomplete. It's almost like, me and this computer, we're perfect. With only letters and combinations of letters, we find a harmony, a sweet piece of rest.

But it's also difficult for me to write anything but the truth. I cannot cover up or deny what my heart is saying to me, so I also cannot make up a story that my heart is not telling. Novels may come one day but, for now, all I know and desire to write is exactly what spills out of my inner most self.

And I would never want to dishonor someone or something, nor would I want to expose secrets and confidentiality. But I have to write something. And so, please-as I write-keep in mind that I believe the only way we ever fully understand grace is to be completely honest with ourselves and with each other. Please read with grace...

Somewhere along the line, I talked myself into understanding Satan as one cruel fellow. The problem with this is that I believed he would only do things that were noticeably awful; things that could be categorized as blatantly harmful. And so, I thought I knew every time that he was planning an attack. I thought I knew right where he was planting his next roadblock, and right where I could find him and stop him in his tracks.

Instead, he found his sly way to my heart. This might seem so obvious to most Christians. "Of course your enemy will use trickery and games to mess with you!" I just didn't know that he could use things that mean so much to me. I didn't quite prepare myself for sweet words and new friends and great opportunities to turn into harmful things.

And this made me caught off guard; a very, very hard place to be. Enticed, comes to mind. The definition of enticing is 'to attract artfully by arousing hope or desire'. And it's obvious to me-a weary, faithful human being-that God would not use this sort of art. He would not have to attract us to something by making it look appealing, or fooling us with false hope. He is hope. And so, enticement can only come from somewhere march darker and much more harmful.

And it's all so unfair. It's unfair that something so wonderful could be so harmful. (Harmful is apparently the only attractive word to me this evening...) It's unfair that something our heart desires and our soul longs for, could come in a form that should have yellow caution tape surrounding it. It's unfair that life can be so difficult to navigate at times.

And in my curiosity of what's really fair, I come across this picture. And usually, 99% of the time, pictures do say a thousand words; a thousand words that I cannot come up with on my own tonight.