The Desert

After coming out of my freshman year of college and having learned a lot about God's love, I realized I still had no idea what love was. I had been taught that love walks away, it cheats, it hurts, scars, breaks, and destroys, but sometimes it could care. Going into the summer last year ('12) I asked God to "redefine" love for me. Want to know how that started? First thing I heard at the beginning of the summer was "You are a prostitute." .....Uh? Excuse me? I just asked you to teach me about love and you're calling me a whore?!.... I knew that God spoke in fragments sometimes, but this was a bit much. A prostitute? Why? I knew I'd had sex before marriage and in a sense "whored" myself out to men, but a prostitute? So I started praying and asking God what he meant by that. He told me to read Hosea. (which for women, I know y'all are thinking "Redeeming Love", but I personally think God's story is better) I started reading Hosea. (which in short is about a man who falls in love with a prostitute that always leaves him) Hosea 2 hit me like a train. There is a part in it that says

"Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them... Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her... 'In that day,' declares the Lord, 'you will call me my husband, you will no longer call me my master.'"

 He was speaking to me. He was saying "Hayley, you aren't going to have a season with guys anymore. You are blocked off from them and I will not let you find them. I want your heart for myself. I want to allure you with kind words, and I want you to love me as a bride loves her husband." I was beginning to understand what God's love was. I had loved God all my life, but I wasn't ever in love with God. When i was "in love" with the boys from my testimony I talked about them all the time, and doted on them. I didn't do that about God. So I asked him.. "God, I'm not in love with you. Romance me so that I can be." Asking him to romance me was the most beautiful decision I have ever made. The summer was filled with it. I was working at Pine Cove (which means no cell phone, no internet, just God 24/7) and he told me it was my "desert". It was at Pine Cove that God would allure me. He did. From small things like waking up and hearing "go to the dock, the sunrise is for you today" or "the whitecaps on the lake are for you, because I know you love them", to big things like him asking me to dance, God romanced me. It was at the end of the summer that he asked me to dance. We were doing worship with the students at Pine Cove, (I worshipped in the back of the room so I had freedom to jump/kneel/walk around/do whatever I needed to) and I was kneeling with my face in the ground because I was so overwhelmed with God's glory and how deeply he loved me, when I heard him say "Beloved". I had my eyes shut but lifted my head, and saw Jesus, standing there, with his hand stretched out like a man does when he asks a woman to dance. He was asking me to dance. It was beautiful, and I started crying immediately. I danced with him, of course, but that was (to this day) the most captivating encounter I've had with God. He taught me what his love is. (1 Corinthians 13... He had me write each thing down and how he was that thing. ex: "Love is patient" -God was patient with me throughout all of my running to boys and saying no to him, he was patient with my needing him to romance me, etc)

It was in the desert that I fell in love with God.