Tear It All Apart: The Cry of a Prodigal Son

Few words have ever so clearly encapsulated the tension of my heart and my head these last couple of years,

and at this time, like clockwork, they become all the more prevalent. After all, next month marks the five year anniversary of my coming into the Roman Catholic Church, and with it comes the ever-present reminder of how my coming into full communion was not a one-off event; rather, it was the beginning of a perpetual homecoming. 

The decision I made five years ago was one driven by a recognition of wanting to be near the Lord; of believing that in my pursuit of Him I would receive all I desired, all I ever hoped for, all I ever needed; of knowing that through accepting His love, forgiveness, and healing the restoration I so desperately sought would be found. Yet, a decision made is not always a decision made without faltering, without difficulty or without the need for recommitence. As Henri J.M. Nouwen notes on my behalf in his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming: "it is the place I want to be, but am so fearful of being" (13).

It has been this state of fear that I have slipped in and out of these first five years of my lifelong conversion. I have struggled in this place the Lord has called me. I have fought against the letting go and hunkered into the holding on. I have skirted surrender and denied complete trust, unable to fathom how this place — my place with Him — could be beyond earning, deserving, and rewarding. I have discounted, disqualified, detached myself from the home He has set for me all the while standing at a distance, beyond the door’s threshold and the garden’s great expanse, longing to be with Him by the hearth where He waits. 

I have been by all accounts, continually and habitually, a prodigal daughter in waiting, wrestling with myself and the Lord on an arduous journey home. I fall so easily to self-pity and to self-doubt, to comparison and to jealousy, to the parts of myself that cry out from abandonment and that rationalize fear and detachment as protection. But my leaving home and my reluctance to enter back into the garden, to leave the barren wasteland and return to the land of milk and honey, is “a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows… Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one" (Nouwen 37). So easily I fall to the temptation of believing that I am unloved to the point of becoming “deaf to the voice that calls me Beloved" (39).

All the while, in the midst of my desertion and my rejection, He has been a constant, gentle shepherd, corralling and leading and patiently waiting for my cooperation. He has remained the still, small voice that rings out in the throws of my doubt and my self-loathing, reminding me in oh so many subtle ways of His knowledge of me and the modes that speak to my heart. “... I realize that the true voice of love is a very soft and gentle voice speaking to me in the most hidden places of my being. It is not a boisterous voice, forcing itself on me and demanding attention. It is the voice of a nearly blind father who has cried much and died many deaths. It is a voice that can only be heard by those who allow themselves to be touched" (Nouwen 40). We often expect to find His voice to be His own when we pray and ask for Him to speak to us, but time and time again He finds me in the words of another, reminding me, especially in these past few months, of my own story as the prodigal child, my homecoming, and my belovedness. 

For instance, I was recently driving home from my grandmother’s house one evening, playing my go-to playlist when a particular song came on and it felt like I was listening to it for the first time. On every other occasion of hearing Michael Marcagi's "Tear It All Apart," I had defaulted to thinking of the recipient being a romantic partner, but for whatever reason I felt a conviction in my heart that the lyrics were a reflection of my own disposition toward God and had been for some time now without my ever admitting it:

I've always had some trouble letting go

And I still lose sleep 'bout stupid shit I've said

But of all the things I've let just take up space in my head

Well, I never really had much room for you

And all I've done

Is take your love and tear it all apart

I guess I always wanted more of you

But I never gave you any of myself

And that's the thing about growing up

Is you can fuck up even when you're tryna help

I couldn’t help but to weep at the image of myself that was being held up to me. And all I’ve done is take your love and tear it all apart. I guess I always wanted more of you but I never gave you any of myself. Here it was all laid out. A perfect summation of my relationship with the Lord: my prideful rejection; my desperate longing; my deep hesitancy; my growing distance; my perpetual regret; my honest and vulnerable desire. All of it laid out so simply as if the Lord had known my heart and written it for me Himself. I have taken His love and torn it all apart, searching for discrepancies, for lies, for exceptions, for any and everything that would vindicate my pride and my self-loathing. And I have done all of this all the while clinging onto a deeply buried hope that it wasn’t foolish to want more of Him, yet reluctant to give any of myself that I deemed imperfect. Left here, with these words, it would have been easy for defeatism and an ever-growing self-rejection to settle in, but our God is a God of deliverance (Psalm 68:20) and with the bridge comes resolution, reconciliation, and hope: 

And all I've done

Is take your love and tear it all apart

And I need someone

To shake me off and lead me from the dark

So will you leave a light on for me?

There's nothing I can tell you to make you believe

And it's cold now, I wanna come home

It's always me that I've been running from

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a more prodigal lyric come out of a secular artist. For any Christian who knows the story of the prodigal son well, the parallels should strike at your senses and, if you’re anything like me, be the familiar cry of your own heart. And I need someone to shake me off and lead me from the dark. So will you leave a light on for me? And it’s cold now, I wanna come home. It’s always me that I’ve been running from. The prayer of my innermost being sung back to me on a rainy drive home. The image of a light left on at dusk. The sight of myself walking up a gravel drive during blue hour. The knock on a screen door. The leaving behind of self. The running towards another. The emergence of arms that lead to a long-awaited embrace. The gentle “welcome home” upon my reception. It becomes hard not to imagine it so personalized. And the greater beauty of it all? I needn’t even ask the question. The gate to the drive will invariably be agape; the porch light will never be turned off; the arms will unfailingly be waiting and ready to receive. For as Nouwen rightfully recognizes, the Father’s “hands have always been stretched out—even when there were no shoulders upon which to rest them. God has never pulled back his arms, never withheld his blessing…" (44).

These last five years of continual conversion have been a constant confrontation with the worst parts of myself and the best parts of the Father. They have been a closing of my own arms at the sight of His spread wide, a self-rejection in the face of abundant self-gift. Yet, as the Lord presents this idea of homecoming to me again and again, through various means and measures, His message becomes clear: it is time to come home. It is time to enter fully into “the place where I so much want to be” and to recognize that as the one and the same as the “place of surrender and complete trust” (13). I must let go of all I most want to hold on to in order to receive all that the Father lovingly desires to give from His abundance. 

“But do I truly want to be restored to the full responsibility of the son? Do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a completely new way of living becomes possible? Do I trust myself and such a radical reclamation? Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so abundantly to God’s love that a new person can emerge?" (53).

Do I truly want to come home? 

Let the answer, as the homecoming, be a perpetual yes.