A Bottle of God

I have been waiting.

I am shy – terribly shy – even in the most boisterous person. I can only whisper, never shout. You may never notice me.
But I am here, waiting.

I do not lie on the surface. If you look and listen, patiently, you will know.
I speak through your confusion, through your wanting, through your hurt. When you stammer, when you say what you did not mean to say, it was I. When you watch a sunset, or hear a child laugh, or listen to a piece of music that causes you suddenly become choked up, it is I that causes your eye to fill. When you are addicted, it is I that is chained.

When the sun burns up and the universe melts away, I will be here. I can be wounded, lost, repulsed, or redeemed. Your circumstances actually matter far less to your happiness than you think. It is my health that makes your life heaven or hell.

I am your soul. I am here.

Excerpt from: Soul Keeping, John Ortberg

This wonderful piece comes from Soul Keeping, a book by the American pastor John Ortberg. I read the book last year and devoured it in just a few days. What an incredibly nourishing book. Nourishing for what? Exactly, for the soul.

My soul, however, is not something I ever paid attention to. On the contrary, for a long time I didn't even know it was part of me, let alone that I cared about it. I just lived, because isn't that what life is all about? Doing fun things and having a good time? Maybe, but the fact was that I always felt a kind of dissatisfaction. Deep inside me, something gnawed at me, something didn't feel right. No matter how enjoyable the activity was, or even how virtuous and good it was, there was always something that didn't feel right. It was a feeling I tried with all my might to deny. I tried to avoid it by doing other fun things. Because as long as I'm busy, I don't hear my soul complaining. It's exactly as Ortberg says: our soul is shy, and it whispers. It won't shout. When do I notice the whisper? In the silence. And sometimes I don't understand it either, because isn't the activity I just did very enjoyable and good? I just went for a cup of tea with a friend. What could be wrong with that?

Nothing. There's nothing wrong with that. That friend is wonderful, and so are the other people I surround myself with. And yet my soul cries. Not just whispers, but cries. I feel an inner emptiness, and I hear a primal scream coming from my soul that says, "Pay attention to me too. You gave attention to someone else, and you received attention, but where was I? Where was the divine, the spiritual, in the encounter?“ And if I am honest, I have to answer: ”Soul, you are right. It wasn't there. It was about the other person, about myself, about the worldly. But God, He wasn't there."

That is why my soul cries. Because my innermost being—where God dwells—also wants to be touched, seen, heard. God wants to be there, in that encounter. And I want to respond to that. Just as a crying baby wants to be picked up by its mother, my crying soul also wants to be touched by me, to receive attention, to receive love. I do that by inviting God back into my being. The God I occasionally talked about in the encounter, but who was not between us. Who was not the third person at the table, but was simply tucked away somewhere deep inside me. “Later. Later I will let you in again, when I am home again. But now it is not possible, because I cannot talk about You all the time, can I? How do I do that, in the ordinary world?”

The answer is: I don't know. I don't know how to do that. How I wish I did know, that my soul would be connected to God 100% of every day—to the God within me who at such moments seems to be miles away from me. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to turn every encounter into a spiritual experience. But I don't know.

So I try to make the best of it. When I'm back home—even when I'm on the train or cycling home against the wind and rain—I listen to worship music. I sing and pray at the same time. I beg and ask God's Spirit to fill me. My hungry soul is then like a hungry baby: give me a bottle now. A bottle of God. The more, the better. And only when it is empty will I feel satisfied. Only when it is empty will I know who I am again. Not my persona, not who I am to the outside world, but that other, deeper layer. That layer that I don't even know or understand myself, but that I do feel, that is there somewhere. Not that I am not myself to the outside world, on the contrary. I am as much myself as I can be. I genuinely enjoy those social, loving encounters. With my friends, with my family. I love being like a fish in social waters. I'm good at it, too. But it's only a small part of who I am, and my soul, God within me, is not to be found there. And so I feel that terrible emptiness afterwards. Every single time. With every encounter that wasn't spiritual. That is, most of them.

My bottle of God is worship music. It's being at home, in my cocoon. It's sitting on my balcony when it rains and hearing the drops tapping on the roof. It's taking a shower and singing and praying out loud. Sometimes it's crying, begging, praying: “Connect with me and make me whole!”

Because that's what it is. Wholeness. Half a Nathalie, the Nathalie without God, is not a whole Nathalie. It's as simple as one plus one equals two, and yet I can only name it now, I can only grasp it now.

But what do I do about it? I don't know. God knows. But first I have to realize it, first see it, first experience it. Without insight, there is no healing. That is one of the mysteries of the universe. First insight and surrender, then healing. I don't have to understand it, nor study it. That won't solve my problem, that won't feed my soul. Complete surrender to God will.

I want to take care of you, my soul. Like a mother cares for her crying child, that is how I want to care for you. And now that I am writing this, I suddenly think of Psalm 42...

As I read this, I think of a Dutch song based on these Bible verses. I discovered the best English version of it just a few days ago—even before I knew I would be writing this article today. In God's world, there's no such thing as coincidence. It's “As the Deer” by Steffany Gretzinger. As I listen to it, I suddenly realize: I am perfectly normal. It is perfectly normal that I feel empty after encounters that were beautiful and good in themselves, but where God was not explicitly present. I am going to repeat this to myself. I am perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. I am perfectly normal. If David—the psalmist—felt that way, why shouldn't I? David, an ancestor of Jesus. David, who wrote beautiful psalms that resonate deep within. That David, who was connected to God.

I am just like David. I am also connected to God. And when I am not for a few hours, my soul hungers for Him. And it always has. Always hungry, so hungry. And I tried to feed it with the wrong food: WhatsApp, dates, starving myself, overeating, excessive exercise, overworking, relationships... With all kinds of things, which only intensified the hunger. I simply couldn't find the right food.

Today I can. Like David, I know which outlet my inner plug needs to be connected to. The only food that effectively nourishes. God is the only one who heals me, anoints me, comforts me, gives me joy. Who fills me from head to toe.

Does that mean the rest of the world is bad? God, no. Anything but! I am so incredibly loved, so cherished. By my dear family, by my friends. So loved. And I love them too. With everything I have in me. But I only find the perfect match with God. And that is exactly as He intended it to be. That is exactly how He made us. And that's okay. The Source of love, I can drink from it. The well that never runs dry. The Source that gives eternal life.

What a gift that my soul whispers, calls, screams, and hungers. It means that my spiritual compass is perfectly tuned, because the needle always points in the right direction: God.