Love

Love Letters to God

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

Sometimes I write love letters to God. They’re intensely personal, so much so that I often have to stop halfway and go play Candy Crush or something… I don’t know where the exact line of how much emotion I can handle lies, but I’ve definitely hit it a few times. This time, I decided to allow others to read.

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Jesus, my Lord, it makes me so happy to think that someday we’ll read this together in Your Presence in Heaven. I.LOVE.YOU.SO.MUCH.

I cannot believe how accepting and uncondemning You have been to me; how You work all the things in me, good and bad, to the greater good; how You walk with me, and continuously teach me, but only when the time is right to learn it; how You cover my weaker judgement with Your love, and my sins with Your suffering… Jesus, it is crystal clear that You died for me. I cannot imagine the kind of fear and claustrophobia of having instruments of torture pierce my body, violating my space and rejecting my personhood. I see nails, Lord, but You knew them intimately.

Lord Jesus, bless everyone who reads this blog, and bless the people who find it. I don’t deserve any fame, Lord Jesus, but please, allow these words to let people who are hurting find their way to greater intimacy with YOU. Let it bring in the people who need most to hear it, when they need to hear it.

God, there’s a lot I don’t understand about life, and a lot I’m still angry about — even at You… But I think a day is coming when I’ll sit beside You with a warm blanket around us both, and gently touch the nail holes in Your hands, and not give a dang about anything that happened before You.

Amen.

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For those looking for more information on becoming a Christian, I recommend peacewithgod.net.

For those without access to a Bible, I recommend Biblegateway.com, a free site with multiple online translations.

Prayer From a Stryker Frame

/ Morgan Grace Hart / 2 Comments

Lately I’ve had this poem in my head, and I thought I should definitely share it. It was written by E. Margaret Clarkson, a woman who lived with debilitating pain through much of her life. I find it extremely encouraging during times of physical pain.

A Stryker Frame was a kind of hospital bed designed to keep a person completely immobile. It was also made where it could be rotated 360°. Clarkson was awaiting surgery while she was in such a frame, some time before 1975.

I tried to seek permission to publish this work, but as the author died in 2008, and I found it in an out-of-print book, I have no idea who owns the work.

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Prayer From A Stryker Frame

Lord, I lie here,
Strapped down, motionless, almost insensible,
Skewered to this strange board
By the cruel, incredible pain;
Unable to move hand, foot, or head
Because of pain’s intensity
And the exigencies of the Stryker.
Pain racks my body through and through;
I lie on a bed of pointed, red-hot nails, Invisible forces pressing, pressing me down
Harder, harder into them…
I scarcely knew such pain could be.

Once You lay on a bed of coals,
Spiked to a stake by pain
Far beyond anything I experience now
Or can possibly imagine.
They lifted You up
Till the nails must have seared Your very soul,
Tearing Your body with the awful thud
Of a cross dumped roughly deep in a pit,
And You impaled upon it.

I lie here of my own necessity,
Hoping to be made well in time
By mystery of surgery;
Willing to be purified by pain
For my own advantage.
You hung there
Out of pure love,
Willing to be crucified, to die
For my sake;
Hoping to gain nothing for Yourself
But Heaven for me. Your anguished cry, “Forsaken!”
Wrung from parched, sinless lips,
Goes echoing down the ages; finds me here
And meets my need.
No “Why?” torments my fevered brain today
For I am not alone:
You answered all the questions
Of tortured human hearts
Once and for all. Your risen life
Within, around, above, beneath,
Supports me
In my pain,
And in Your peace I rest. They turn me over now. Circulation
And other physical requirements dictate
This painful thrust
Three times each day.

Here I lie, prostrate,
Throbbing, rigid,
Face to the dust,
Humble before Your feet.

Face to the dust, I worship You, my Lord,
In this strange, love-lit sanctuary,
Bowed by compulsion, true,
But also by new love,
Freshly born of pain,
Adoring You in wonder and in awe
Who for my sake

 Hung on Your cross.
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Relevant Scriptures:
Isaiah 53:3 (which is talking about Jesus)
For those who want to learn more about Christianity or wish to speak to a live counselor, I recommend peacewithgod.net.

A Belated Christmas Miracle

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment
I am always a little embarrassed to report when miracles happen in my life. I don’t know why exactly. I think on some level I fear the backlash – people trying to disprove the miracle or tell me it wasn’t a miracle at all – and unlike an intellectual argument, there’s absolutely no proof I can give. It’s a vulnerable piece of my life that, like a memory, is important to me and I don’t want it to be mishandled in the hands of others and given back to me in a crumpled, scratched-up state.
But when you know, you know. And nothing strengthens another person’s faith quite like hearing about what God has done for others. So, as a kind of belated Christmas gift, I give this report to you, which happened the day before Christmas this year. I want to note that, when I talk about the things the Lord has said to me, I don’t want these taken as a direct quote or a Gospel truth – rather, it is the best summation of the best understanding of what I feel Him saying to me.
I had been very sick with strep for about a week at this point. I had had a very rough year and had high hopes of finally getting enough time off to accomplish something, when I was struck with a debilitating bout of strep that kept me mostly bedridden and unable to speak. Even after several days of antibiotics, I was still exhausted, and miserable as I watched my small window of precious time be engulfed by fever and aching sleep. I watched the already filthy house get even filthier and my out-of-control children get even more out of control. No strength for cleaning, no voice for disciplining.
It was on December 24th that I felt called very specifically to prayer. I crouched down on my floor (as tired as I was, my muscles were so achy that laying was uncomfortable and I avoided it as much as I could). I felt the presence of Christ specific and very close to me, and I could see in my mind’s eye Him reaching out His hand and touching my head.
“Christmas…” He said, “you’ve worked so hard to give your family a good Christmas, you’ve made yourself sick in the process… Well, here’s my gift to you: you’re clean.” I just sat there blinking for a minute, not sure what He was telling me. “You’re healed,” He said. And sure enough, from that moment on, I was healed, even leaving shortly after my time with Him to do a 5-hour cleaning binge so that all our Christmas morning photos wouldn’t show the world how dirty our house was.
Someone knocked on the bedroom door, and I begged them to give me a little more time alone. They left. I was still sitting there, cross-legged, in the presence of Christ. He touched my head again, blessing my 2017. I had been terrified of the new year. Between the oil slump, the volatile local and world politics, the threat of war, and the hurdles my kids were facing, it had never even occurred to me that I might actually have a GOOD 2017.
He talked to me more, telling me that He loved me and reminding me that, while in this world our best kinds of love have to be divided into their appropriate places – the kind of love you have for a spouse, the kind you have for a child, the kind you have for a brother, etc. – all good kinds of love exist together simultaneously in God. That’s how He can address me as His daughter, His bride, His friend, and so on: there’s no boundaries needed. He loves me all these ways, all at once. And He also loves me in the most precious relationship of all: with me as His human and He as my God.
When I sensed everything was dealt with and His presence was leaving me, I begged Him to stay just a little while longer. So He stayed with me, His love surrounding me, until I was ready to go.
I was elated as I stood up and left the room. I sat on the couch, utterly alive with the afterglow of having been in His presence. I kept thinking of something totally random… How when Christ “rewired” me, 11 years ago (I have always thought of salvation in such terms, for whatever reason), that He left a part of Himself ‘to fertilize my heart so that good things could grow there’. How proud I felt to know that God had trusted me enough to live on in my heart! How wonderful it would be if I could SHOW it to people, just unbutton my collar, as easily as showing them a scar from heart surgery….
I wanted so badly to TELL someone. Just to pick up the phone and say, “guess what I got for Christmas? A visit from my best friend!”. But, as I have said, I get shy talking about such things.
Needless to say, Christmas was beyond wonderful. I was filled with joy the whole day and got everything I needed or wanted, with the promise of a good year to come. But of course, by far, my favorite gift will always be the un-buyable, un-earnable, presence of Jesus Christ.
With Much Love, and a Happy New Year,
Morgan Hart