Still...we do love now and then...

I have some sort of weird infection or something on my finger. Every 6 or 8 weeks my skin just starts peeling off and then my finger cracks and bleeds and it's a horrible looking and feeling thing... My doctor thinks that I'm coming into contact with something on an irregular basis that maybe I'm alergic to or something - contact dermatitis or something like that - heh, med school, what does he know? I guess it's possible. It's just so weird that it's always this same finger, in the same place, and the same thing happens...

The skin on my finger, after it grows back, is all leathery - it's been irritated so many times that I think it's beginning to alter its structure or something (maybe I'm evolving - yeah, leather finger man...or, um...whatever...)

Oh well - it's just another annoyance in life. I don't really spend hours awake at night wondering what I've come into contact with that makes my finger wig out...

But I can live with it. I was thinking yesterday, though, what if something happened to that finger (okay, I was REALLY thinking - what if it's leprosy - but I can have my hypochondracish moments) and I lost the finger - what would be different? Would I be less a man - less a human being because I was "incomplete"? Would Lori not want me to hold her hand anymore? Would my daughters not want to be held by their "nine-fingered" daddy?

And then I realized that all that is stupid. In any number of ways I AM incomplete - broken, even. Yet they love me. You know, I can't think of a single reason why Lori and Rachel and Elie should love me - well, I mean, they ARE related to me...but it's not like I DO anything to make them love me...but they do. I so don't deserve it. I'm so inadequate in so many ways...

You know where this is going, right? God, why do you love me? It doesn't make any sense... I'm so bad at loving you back. I'm so bad at loving AT ALL. Why? Why would you die for me? Look, I know it wasn't JUST for me (and I'm really glad, because I'm not sure I could handle THAT, to be honest) but, still, you did die for me... I won't even live for you...

There's a great line - I know I've quoted it before - in Rich Mullins' "Hard to Get"

"We have a love that's not as patient as your was...still we do love now and then..."

Incomplete... I want to be In complete - complete in You... I do... most of the time... Okay, sometimes... I guess I still want to be mostly me, too... Still, I do love now and then...

Not sure what any of this has to do with my finger. It's making me type really strangely... I can't stop thinking about it... Why can I stop thinking about God so easily?

I need to go to bed...

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