Breaking Pride's Protective Shell

          I've been in bad shape. Don't really know why. I've found a measure of healing laying here in the woods and crying. Reading back in my journal and asking You to show me what it was I wasn't getting, has helped.

                   --  I notice you don't ask Me to speak into your mind.  --

          I guess I haven't.  I seem to want to feel blank in my brain, yet I get this queasy feeling like I should ask if You have anything to say to me like last Sunday.

So, please clear my mind.  Protect me from anything myself and any other input that is not of You, in Jesus name...  I place myself before You, and I am willing and desirous to hear You.

--  My child  - I love you.

Do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid -

for I am with you.

I am with your friend. 

I know you are worried about her, but she is in My hands, for I love her as I love you.  --

(I see a "picture" of You holding her face in Your hands and kissing the top of her head, and Your love just "running down" all over her.)

--  Keep that picture before you

and know that I love her

and know that I love you.

You do "count" with Me.

You do matter to Me.  --

(Lord?  The tears start to choke me.)

(--  Keep writing, child.  --)

--  You do matter to Me and I love you.  --

(Lord? the next thing I hear seems like just a memory from Anne's prophecy over me at Haymarket, but I feel blocked if I don't write it... and I don't want to write it because I can't believe it is from You. It sounds too preposterous.)

--  I cannot "live" without you: you mean that much to Me.

Come.  Lay your heart in My hands and know that I love you. 

Know that I do want you for My own,

My very own.  --

(please, Lord:  conflicting loves and loyalties?)

--  I'll resolve them, for you cannot resolve them in and of yourself. 

And this is how I will do it:

I will love you until you can love no more,

and then I will love through you.

There is much love I have to offer a dying world, and I offer/long to love through you --

but your love will not suffice.

Under its severity, you would "crack".

You cannot take it: the pain is too great.

But I can take it.

Let Me love through you.

Let Me care through you.

Let Me tend through you.

But to do this, you first must let Me do all three for you.  You do count with Me. 

You must know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

You think all growth must come through suffering but, you think wrongly.

Much growth doesn't.

Rather it comes through love,

through the experience of being loved.

This is what changes you

This is what brings growth

This is what brings true humility:

the knowledge of being loved, being deeply loved,

will break the hardest shell of pride.

Yes, I know -- you have read that knowledge of being deeply loved brings humility. 

I can and do draw on that which you have read. 

But notice:  I take it beyond and tell you that humility means

the hard shell of pride has been broken.

Don't you see what this means? 

Pride is used by all as a shell to protect the heart. 

You have long wanted Me to deal with your pride,

but I need to deal with the hurt that underlies it.  --