These Bones: A Need, A Vision, A Command, and a Promise

Have you ever been thirsty? I don't mean your run-of-the-mill, need a glass of water thirsty; we are talking about the deep, dire, deep down thirst.  Soul thirst.

It isn't the most comfortable conversation to have, is it? Talking about our lowest moments...the moments when your soul cries out, parched?

Let me tell you, I know I have felt this thirst.  Honestly, I have spent more time with a thirsty soul than I care to admit; and admitting it is the hardest part. We (and others) tell ourselves that there is no room for anything but a heart of joy in our walk with God. 

Y'all, it is only through owning and admitting our pain, our thirst, that we can escape the desert that traps us.

In my early 20s, I was in an abusive relationship.  The culmination of my attempts to leave were the stuff of horror movies: he held me hostage, I was drugged and gang raped.  Somehow, I survived the night.  Well, physically, anyhow.  Everything else died that night, when my body almost did. I was a member of the living dead.  I wandered around, battling through, and then, I decided I couldn't battle anymore.  A little more than a year after I survived that long, dark, night; I decided the outside should match the inside.  I tried to take my own life, and almost succeeded.  Four days later, when I finally was conscious and transferred from the intensive care unit to the medical floor, I woke up thirsty.  I don't want to short sell the wreckage that was my suicide attempt...I did not wake up thinking that life was a miracle.  I woke up angry; angry that I had failed, angry that God could not let my suffering end either time, angry at everything and everyone around me.  My soul was so thirsty I did not even recognize it anymore.

For years, I wandered around angry, I could not let myself move forward.  It was six years of wandering around angry before I made myself begin to face the past, to acknowledge the thirst.

All of those years ago, I had forced myself into silence and self-imposed exile. I felt so alone, I just knew that there was no room for someone as angry, numb, and broken to have a place, none-the-less a voice in God's story.

Lies;  but in the dark, loneliness of self-exile, the volume of our voice becomes amplified. 

Can I tell you a story about someone else who was in a very similar place?

While the Bible is filled with examples of brokenness, despair, and spiritual thirst, very few are as well-known as Ezekiel.  Ezekiel had been forced out of Jerusalem, and into exile.  He was a Priest without a place to call home. Just when things seem awful enough, Ezekiel's wife dies.

Y'all, life was pretty miserable.  Dry.  Thirsty.  Soul-thirsty.

That was not the end, however.  As we read on, in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel (verses 1-14), we read of a vision...a valley filled with dry bones.  Ezekiel did not know it at first, but God was about to share the problem and the solution; the solution he may not have even known he needed.

The solution that I needed all of those years ago...

Are you thirsty? Come back for more of the story in Part Two...