Are You Safe?

“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.  He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.  In God is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.  Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your hearts before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah.” (Psalm 62:5-8 KJV)

 
                                                                                      SAFE
 
I want to be safe
Like a child held close
Like a city hemmed in
Like deep love cloaks
 
I want to be safe
Behind and before
To the left and the right
A guard at my door
 
I want to be safe
Peace like a river
Breath exhaled gently
Like a captive delivered
 
I want to be safe
Open, vulnerable, sure
Accepted, loved, cherished
More than just endured
 
I want to be safe
Fear unhinged, set aside
In your heart, in your arms
Let me forever abide
 
I want to be safe
Unfettered, strong, free
Where I am enough
Where I can simply be me
 
I want to be safe
No lock on the door
No bolts, no alarms
My heart becoming more
 
I want to be safe
To feel like I’m home
To abide in tranquility
To finally be known…
 
 
 
 
I have never felt safe in love, never felt securely held.  There was always the fear of being dropped, of dangling over the precipice of love’s antithesis, threatened rather than embraced.  For years I sought out my own brand of ‘safe’ love; in someone already taken, in bruises and mocking, in the silence and unrelenting fury of a black heart, in cloaking myself in lesser filth in hopes no one would notice how filthy I really was.  What I thought was safe was really only an apparition, a false comfortable lie.  I was so afraid of being clean, of being known, of being seen.  Yet I craved it so, deep in the cavernous void it whispered, “this is not all there is.” 
 
And isn’t it what we all crave and yet are so afraid of?  To stand unashamedly naked before your beloved; your scars, and skin, and the very sinew of your soul exposed, yet somehow covered?  Is it not to be who we truly are, to be beautifully vulnerable, to be known by another, to be fully taken in, engulfed in the glimmering glory of their steadfast love of you?  Is it not to have them place their hand and their heart on your places of pain, and find they soothe you rather than make manifest your weaknesses?  Is it not to find someone who traces the fragile lines of your heart with their finger, not to probe or harm, but to caress with velvet compassion and sincerity?  Is it not to have them pierce you through with tenderness that purges out the remnants of insecurity? 
 
This is the safety I want.
I want to be safe in a way that is wild and dangerous, like a great beast about to devour me whole.
I want to risk me as I stand before you, knowing you could dash me to pieces, but wanting the safety of your arms more.
I want the safety and sobriety of desperate passion-born intimacy, the clinging need for more and more of you for more and more of me. 
I want the exchange of minds, and hearts, and souls, and spirits that stretches far beyond reason.
I want the safety of a death that bursts forth into magnificent life.
I want the safety of inseparable oneness. 
 
All of this and more I have found and am finding in Christ Jesus.  He is the answer to that ache we all feel…when you haven’t found the safety of real love in another, when what you thought is not how it is, when what you see betrays the trust your heart longs for, when you open up, lay yourself out there and they leave anyway, when it doesn’t make sense, when they die, when they lie, when it hurts more than you can bear…He is your safety, He is your refuge, He is forever and always holding you and He won’t let go…not ever.
 
Are you safe?  Safe in His heart, safe in His care, safe in His grace, safe in His mercy, safe in His arms, safe in intimate union with Him?  He is the only place of real safety. 
 
Embrace Him as He embraces you and know what it is to be truly, wonderfully, forever safe…
 
 
 
 
Written by Anne Marie Hawke
January 2021
 
 
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