Create in Me a Clean Heart

When repentance reaches the places I still protect

“You love truth in the heart.”

⸻

Have mercy on me, O God.

Not because I have fallen spectacularly.

Not because I have scandalized anyone.

But because I have learned how to survive intact.

My sin is always before me.

Not in the obvious places.

Not in the things others would condemn.

But in the quiet strategies I use to stay oriented.

The way I lean on identity when trust feels too thin.

The way I protect meaning when surrender feels too costly.

I know how to appear faithful.

I know how to speak the language of repentance.

I know how to offer what looks like a broken heart

while still guarding the last place where I remain necessary.

Against You alone have I sinned.

Because the real struggle is not with rules

but with letting You be enough

when everything that once told me who I was

has been stripped away.

You love truth in the heart.

And this is where I am afraid.

Because truth means admitting

that I still want something to stand on besides You.

That I still look for a role to justify my existence.

That I still measure myself by usefulness, coherence, direction.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Not a religious one.

Not a productive one.

A clean one.

Clean of the need to be seen as faithful.

Clean of the quiet bargaining that says

I will give You everything except this last anchor.

Clean of the illusion that orientation itself can save me.

Do not cast me away from Your presence.

Because sometimes I am the one who steps back.

Not in rebellion

but in hesitation.

In caution.

In the fear of being nothing but Yours.

Restore in me the joy of Your salvation.

Not the satisfaction of understanding.

Not the reassurance of structure.

Joy.

The joy that comes when I no longer have to hold myself together.

A humbled, contrite heart You will not spurn.

This is the only ground left.

Not clarity.

Not identity.

Not even spiritual orientation.

Only the heart that stops defending itself

and stays.

This is the fast I cannot manage.

This is the repentance I cannot perform.

This is the mercy I am waiting for

with empty hands.