You Get What You (don’t) Deserve

Deserve. 

A word that pulls my face to the center. Sour. Its sound pounding like a hammer. A gavel coming down attached to an invisible hand.

I think my disdain for the word birthed somewhere around the time when well-meaning people told me I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. 

You deserve better.

He never deserved you.

You deserve so much more.

Piling like flowers at a funeral and sympathy cards in the mailbox. Yet I’d never asked for the condolences to arrive in such a form. 

How did they know what I truly deserved? What happened to me was wrong. Sure. The pain was real. Yes. But what I deserved? Did they have a secret window to my thoughts or a pathway to my heart? Because although I’d been broken, I somehow couldn’t nod my head to the bold line of what exactly I did or didn’t deserve. How good does a wife need to be to deserve loyalty? Is there a measure of perfection to reach to check the box of a betrayal being undeserving? 

As I swayed to the hymns in our Good Friday service this evening, the word hung heavy. The image on the cross. 

I hear it more and it thumps in my eardrums leaping out of sentences and blaring from subtle phrases. Take your well-deserved vacation, they say at work. Enjoy your much-deserved promotion. But, how many hard working days or bright ideas or intense projects does it take to reach that mark? What exactly are the requirements to deserve that reward? Can it be summed up on paper, or is it only attained when the end of our mental ropes are reached. And even then- I’m sure there was more I could’ve done.

More. Better. Deeper. Longer.

The rope grows higher into the sky and my fingers ache from trapping it in my hands as I strive to reach the top to become deserving.

I think maybe I hate the word, because I do in fact know what I deserve. I deserve to be the one to pay for my sins. To reap the consequences. 

The only one who freed me from that penalty is the only one who never deserved his death. I don’t belong in the same breath as that word, deserve. It’s used all wrong. 

But, I can let go of the rope, because no amount of climbing will capture its essence. 

Good Friday is a reminder that we were rescued…before we ever had to even hold on.