Being Without

By Anne Marie Schlueter

Empty hands.  

Heart filled with expectation, but empty hands. In this space between desiring and seeing the fulfillment of desire. Sacrificing whatever desire that I was so brave to claim. But now it’s on the altar, like the promised son of Abraham. 

And, through it all, He’s promised me that I will never be without. Because I am His.

Big dreams. Bigger God, breathing bigger dreams into the depths of my soul. By claiming the strength to want more, the courage to stand in the in-between of wantingand receiving, will the waiting break me?

No. It won’t. Because He’s here. And where He is, there is only abundance. He does not withhold.

Our desire is but a shadow of what He’s doing because we can’t contain Him. And yet, the hugeness of a growing desire…it was never meant to be a burden, to spin us into the chaos of wondering hows and whys. It was meant to introduce us to the weight of glory.

He promised that I would never be without. The cross is the promise, an engagement ring of purest gold, and He promised that I would not live in the desert, but in the land of the promise. The cross was my gateway to the land of the living, where the spirit of adoption gets to take over my heart. 

I get to lay down all my wants and be still and know. Not fight for love but be loved. And that’s huge. That’s everything.

And, despite the sacrifice of my King over two thousand years ago, I’m still here, in this crazy space of being twenty years old. There’s so much I don’t know. There’s so much I’m longing for. 

But there is peace accessible to me now. Because in laying down my timeline, in laying down what I think I want and how I think I should get it, there’s freedom. Because He knows and He doesn’t abandon.

Right now, He might not be offering me a husband, twelve kids, a stadium filled with people to speak to, a publishing deal, a plan for what to do after college...but what He is offering me? Complete security in that no one can steal from me what He’s won for me. No one can beat me to what He’s promised me. Whatever that is. (I know it’s so good.)

He is offering me His whole heart. He tells me that I can dream bigger and desire more. And as dreams and desires arise in my heart that might seem too big or totally nonsensical, I get to lay them down and claim peace. Even before completion, there is total peace, because He’s above it all. He’s before, He’s in the middle, He’s in the outcome. He’s here, in this very step in the process.

He’s already giving me everything that I could possibly hope for, beyond what I understand, and it’s only just beginning. I haven’t the slightest clue what my life looks like two years from now, but I know that there is peace here. I have finally given my heart permission to rest in this space.

He’s made me for open spaces. He doesn’t inflict suffocation. He’s walked through all my walls, knocking them to the ground. He’s made me new and set me free, and He wants to prove His love to me. 

When He came tearing into my world with plans to redeem and restore, with plans to suffer and die, with plans to introduce me to His Father and with a burning desire to be seen with me, He didn’t intend for there to be a single moment of my existence when He didn’t provide for me.

He’s not withholding. You weren’t created to be without. He wants to show you how.

And whatever I’m waiting for, whatever dream or desire or relationship or whatever, pales in comparison to the love that He’s made accessible to me right now. 

So often, I’ve seen desire place a divide between my heart and the Father’s. It’s a source of frustration, leading to inevitable disappointment. And wherever there’s the burden of desire, it’s because I’ve made the desire into a false god. Because desire was intended to introduce us to the weight of His glory, the perfect weight of His love. Desire was intended to lead us into the dance of His provision.

I am convinced that there is never a time in our lives when God is stagnant or passive. Therefore, He’s always pouring out. Even when we’re not understanding the events in our lives, His entire heart is completely accessible to us. 

He’s the God of the unexpected. So yes, maybe we don’t know exactly what the promise looks like, but we know who our Father is and what He does.

And, just, wow. 

We don’t have to ever be without. Let Him show you how.