El trigo de lost campos hacia el oeste espera en voluntaria entrega.

Jesus said: “Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls on earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” John 12:23–24

So I gave away my copy of Voskamp’s The Broken Way as a Christmas present and book club is meeting tonight and the library has a huge back-upped waiting list so yesterday afternoon I hung out in the backyard hammock reading Quebrantamiento.

It goes a lot better if I read it out loud, and sometimes I have to read the burnished truths a couple of times to let it sink in.

El trigo de lost campos hacia el oeste espera en voluntaria entrega.

Y yo simplemente trator de respirar. Permitirte ser amada implica una terrible vulnerabilidad y entrega. Permitiirte ser amada es tu propia forma de entrega. Permitirte ser amada te entrega a la misericordia do otro y te quedas simplemente con la confianza de que seguira amandote, de que to querran de la manera que quierres que te quieran, que no romperan el corazón que has entregada. –Ann Voskamp

And in this time of winter waiting for this death of brokenheartedness, I cling with aching fingers to the dirt’s edge of how it’s always been. There is a comfort, a small palm-held security in my hard protective cáscara. A comfort so small that I used to weep myself to sleep each night.

“Let go and enter My embrace,” He gently calls me.

And yesterday I entered His embrace again and again. Uncomplicated and joyous with fixed eyes on Jesus even though life’s storms rage on. Yesterday I knelt down on the red velveteen cushions at Prince Chapel and joined their Christian discipleship. And up until this moment the verbiage in the bulletin was a little off-putting for someone who first invited Jesus into her five-year-old heart echoing the little italicized prayer at the end of the Little Visits with God storybook. And I have been baptized twice already.

The invitation reads: Person(s) wishing to join Prince Chapel AME Church, Please, come forward at this time and receive Jesus the Christ.

But after Pastor Edwin R. Donaldson Jr. and Reverend George Priest laid hands on me and prayed not only for blessing but for a shield of protection around me, one by one, Jesus the Christ filed by and embraced me, buried me into His sweet arms and whispered, “Welcome.”

“Let go and enter My embrace,” He gently calls me.

I’ll take it. I’ll take His words like a daring covenant, not knowing yet what’s to come: there is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound—no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth. – Ann Voskamp