BROKEN CISTERNS, NEW BEGINNINGS, AND OTHER REFLECTIONS ON MY 43RD TRIP AROUND THE SUN
My six-year-old daughter and I have been listening to a song together for the past month or so. She has come to ask for it, and I happily oblige any chance I get. The chorus is simple, but hearing her little voice sing is a sound I would like to bottle up and keep for the rest of my life.
It’s simple, and goes like this:
"So let our hearts be awake, be awake
Let our heart be awake, be awake
So let our hearts be awake, be awake
Let our heart be awake, be awake."
The song is called “Every Table is An Alter” by Jason Upton. His album, A Table Full of Strangers, has been on heavy rotation since September, and I have found the cry of my heart inside his storytelling.
It is the eve of my 44th birthday, and I find myself away, having space to process this past trip around the sun. Several months ago, I got the invite to a writing retreat without knowing that my birthday was falling on that weekend and that our life was about to shift in some significant ways. This morning I headed out for a run, the thing I do when I wish to connect with my heart. What can be accessed at a pace of around 10 minutes a mile amazes me. I'm not as fast as I used to be, but that doesn't matter much. When I'm running, I pay attention to the beating of my heart, and somehow the pathways between my head and soul become a wide-open highway. Far as I can tell, it's the power of movement and the elimination of distraction. When I run, I pray, I think, I plead. This morning was no different.
What I was doing today was surveying the past 365 days in an attempt to process a year that felt in many ways laborious, confusing, and frustrating. Between these themes, there were plenty of moments where heaven met earth and times of relief and clarity. But all in all, it was a year of heavy wrestling with the state of my own heart. What is becoming clear is God, in his sovereignty, was allowing this season to make me hungry for Him again, clearing some space for what was coming. As easy as that is to say in one sentence, no part of it felt good. And I can see now that it wasn't meant to. I've been beating this drum of the gift of repentance for going on three years now. His kindness always leads us to repentance, but rarely does it feel kind in the moment.
Around the age of 40, God invited me into healing around past trauma and its effects on my life. These were big, obvious hurdles that required a lot of work. This year, He has been asking for some of the more concealed areas of my heart, wounds that I haven't allowed Him to heal.
BROKEN CISTERNS
This morning I was reading Jeremiah, and this passage jumped off the page.
"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." — Jeremiah 2:13
This historical context is important here. Jeremiah was a young prophet charged with calling the nation of Israel, who had been in rebellion, back to God. There were two seasons in this region, the rainy and the dry. During the rainy season, people would store up water in cisterns in the ground to prepare for the dry season. You could imagine the importance of those systems not failing.
The people Jeremiah spoke to would have known about this practice, which is why this metaphor was so powerful. Jeremiah didn't waste much time delivering his message, calling them out for abandoning their one true God. Jeremiah may as well have been talking directly to me. You may say, "Julie, that sounds harsh." We don't use words like forsaken these days and don't particularly like to take inventory of things like idols or how our hearts can so quickly become ruled by bitterness instead of love. We don't want to do this, but we must.
The truth is I had dug my own cisterns, and there were failing. For better or worse, I am in touch with my heart enough to know when at least a part of it is sick. The more challenging part is figuring out why.
I love David's tenderness in Psalm 139 and how he speaks so poetically to the all-knowing, ever-present God who formed our innermost parts and who has numbered our days. David's appeal at the end is one we should regularly ask of ourselves.
"Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!"
Psalm 139:23-24
I had gotten to a place where I knew I was heartsick and desperately wanted to be healed. One thing I know to be true—when you earnestly and honestly seek the Lord, He will be found. Over the course of the last year, God began to reveal some deep wounds I had collected over the years. Two things have always been true about me. One, I am painstakingly hard on myself. I have been since the time I was a kid. Second, I have an overwhelming fear of being abandoned by the people who love me the most. Those two things can seem benign enough, but I have found they have kept me holding on to hurt that turns into bitterness that festers like no other wound. Broken cisterns of bitterness quickly become pride, and that is a hard place for God to dwell.
Admitting your heart is broken is an invitation to the Lord. He is a kind, compassionate God who will always meet you in your hour of need. Don't believe me? Here is some proof.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.—Psalm 34:18
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.—Isaiah 57:15
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. —Ezekiel 36:26
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.—Psalm 147:3
I come back to the chorus I have been singing to my daughter. "Let our hearts be awake, be awake." If that is not a cry for this moment in time, I don't know what is. The past couple of years have tested us all, they have brought us to the end of ourselves and at odds with each other, but I get the sense we want something new. As much as we would like to point outward to find the problem, I believe God is far more concerned with us looking inward. As I step into a new year, I do so desiring to have a heart where God can dwell freely and guide gently. Broken cisterns can't hold water, that is true, but the living God can restore anything that has been cracked. I believe it for me now more than ever, and I believe it for you, too.
WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW NOW
I type this with the gift of hindsight, yet still, smack dab in the middle of living in the mystery of God. What I wish I had asked a year ago is this. What are you preparing me for, God? In what ways are you calling my heart back to you?
I gifted my husband a small pine tree on Christmas this past year. We had yet to memorialize a miscarriage that we had a couple of years ago that I wanted this tree to represent, but I couldn't shake that it was for something more. For the past few months, I sensed that something was shifting, but I had no idea what. Everything, including the mending of my own heart, felt urgent. Perhaps that was why the pain was more acute. I can remember what I was feeling on Christmas morning. Something in my spirit told me that this would be the last year Christmas would look this way again. That next year would somehow be different. I wrote this on the card.
Let's plant this together, remembering the past, and looking ahead for what's to come. In memory of Jack. With hope for all God has for us.
"I am certain that I will see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord." Pslam 27:3-14
Little did we know on Christmas that a 20-month-old baby boy would come into our home in just a few weeks. Lord willing, he will officially become our son later this year. I don't claim to be prophetic. I didn't know this exact scenario was coming, but I am confident that God was working on my heart long before this precious little boy made his way to us. Is this what God had been preparing me for this entire year? I can't say I know for sure, but it would be like Him not to allow us to bring in a new heart without first mending ours. His ways are higher than ours, which is God's great mystery. Thank you for restoring my heart, O Lord.
I'll leave you with the song I have been singing with my daughter. May it sink into your bones the way it has mine—a cry for our time. Let our hearts be awake.
ALWAYS a joy to read your insightful and heartfelt words, dear Julie. May our hearts be awake even more in 2023 for what the LORD has in store for our families... Hope you have an awesome birthday today!
Thank you. . . and I would say that I’m without words, but as I listen to this heart anthem I think tears are words 💜