3.29.2009
walking alone
...so as the day turns into night, I sit down to write. The pressure behind my eyes begins to subside as the deep breaths that hint to my stress become less frequent. The darkness holds back time as I finally can think and write and sip and think and breathe. Subjects with the weight of an ocean pour over us without mercy. Faithfulness meets fear for coffee as they ponder common ground. What to do next? How many moments that should have been treasured, set aside, savored were forced to share space with preoccupations of the day? When did I give permission for this? When did the line between purpose and survival dissapear? I had it all figured out last month, I swear! The answers were put in place and the way was clear. Where did it go? I didn't blink or make a turn yet I don't know if I'm on the same road. Will I compromise today? Will I do what I shouldn't to appease everyone else and make our lives much more bearable? What will I lose if I do? I won't, anyway; and I'll suffer for it. I'll lose the respect of many and the trust of those I love. Still, I won't anyway. I don't think I've ever before understood how alone I truly am, in human company anyway. My cats like me and God hasn't budged from my side. Still, my coffee has grown chilly and it's not safe to walk outside alone. I need to walk alone. He's snoring. I'm typing. The wash is drying. The boy is dreaming. I'm typing; confirming my choices so I know on what to stand firm. Defining my place so I know in whom I can find support. Dreading the light, knowing what it brings. I'll embrace tonight for a little while longer.
3.27.2009
Mortal moments...
I have moments of mortality. On the hearing, one would assume them to be instants of frailty or fear but they're nothing like that. They are 'step back and see who you are, where, and for now' moments.
I had one today. I was walking home from a friend's house. I approached my white painted, rented porch and there He was. I stood still, right next to Time. I saw the porch not as another seamless step in my ever increasingly stressed existence but as the backdrop of a scene. My backdrop on this set for these days. Out of body? More like the cleansing of my perspective. I've always been aware of Time and his role in my script. And since the day I understood that these eyes were peering out from this soul, I've respected Him. I like Him. His prescence means to me that this is not all and that although we walk well together I will one day be waving goodbye to Him from a distance. He stays, I don't.
My moments of mortality. They very much have defined who I chose to be through all of my steps of life. As a child I knew when an opportunity came to be kind, it was there for me to take. I probably learned that one from my parents or Sunday School. You don't wait for someone else to come along and fill the void. You step towards the opportunity and embrace it. I remember the feeling of regret when I would pass those chances by. I saw Time walk away from me and I was never able to see Him in the same light again. The moment had passed. The regret clung to me as a reminder never to let it happen again. Thus I was a kind kid.
As a suicidal teen I was taunted by Time. He would highlight each tedious task of each moment of each day that would be for the rest of my unending years stuck here. Shower, wake up, study or fail, locker, homeroom, which house to go back to, who to trust, who to follow, who to hate, how to make it all stop, wake up, study, locker, homeroom...and don't worry it won't last forever. After school you can have a job from 9-5 and a mortgage and car payments and taxes, 9-5, mortgage, payments.... I didn't like Time then. He was always there and wouldn't let me think.
But we didn't wave goodbye.. I'm glad now. I wasn't then.
When I became a mother Time dropped the ball. Maybe he got jealous. He would skip minutes at first and then be gone for months. When I felt him again my son was walking. He hung around us for a while but only until I was working, going to school and watching the little boy make friends and get bitten by girls in day care and making school projects and tucking himself in. Those were the years Time fudged the numbers. Not fair to us but every thing has it's lesser moments. But we at least we were friends again. I appreciated His prescence in my life and consequently He didn't hound me anymore. He just hung around.
But this scene on the porch was just another moment in another day in another town for another reason. We shook hands again, caught up with each other in that fleeting glimpse and we were refreshed. Time went on with His duties and I stepped back on my stage. I wasn't aware that my perspective had needed cleaning. It did.
I had one today. I was walking home from a friend's house. I approached my white painted, rented porch and there He was. I stood still, right next to Time. I saw the porch not as another seamless step in my ever increasingly stressed existence but as the backdrop of a scene. My backdrop on this set for these days. Out of body? More like the cleansing of my perspective. I've always been aware of Time and his role in my script. And since the day I understood that these eyes were peering out from this soul, I've respected Him. I like Him. His prescence means to me that this is not all and that although we walk well together I will one day be waving goodbye to Him from a distance. He stays, I don't.
My moments of mortality. They very much have defined who I chose to be through all of my steps of life. As a child I knew when an opportunity came to be kind, it was there for me to take. I probably learned that one from my parents or Sunday School. You don't wait for someone else to come along and fill the void. You step towards the opportunity and embrace it. I remember the feeling of regret when I would pass those chances by. I saw Time walk away from me and I was never able to see Him in the same light again. The moment had passed. The regret clung to me as a reminder never to let it happen again. Thus I was a kind kid.
As a suicidal teen I was taunted by Time. He would highlight each tedious task of each moment of each day that would be for the rest of my unending years stuck here. Shower, wake up, study or fail, locker, homeroom, which house to go back to, who to trust, who to follow, who to hate, how to make it all stop, wake up, study, locker, homeroom...and don't worry it won't last forever. After school you can have a job from 9-5 and a mortgage and car payments and taxes, 9-5, mortgage, payments.... I didn't like Time then. He was always there and wouldn't let me think.
But we didn't wave goodbye.. I'm glad now. I wasn't then.
When I became a mother Time dropped the ball. Maybe he got jealous. He would skip minutes at first and then be gone for months. When I felt him again my son was walking. He hung around us for a while but only until I was working, going to school and watching the little boy make friends and get bitten by girls in day care and making school projects and tucking himself in. Those were the years Time fudged the numbers. Not fair to us but every thing has it's lesser moments. But we at least we were friends again. I appreciated His prescence in my life and consequently He didn't hound me anymore. He just hung around.
But this scene on the porch was just another moment in another day in another town for another reason. We shook hands again, caught up with each other in that fleeting glimpse and we were refreshed. Time went on with His duties and I stepped back on my stage. I wasn't aware that my perspective had needed cleaning. It did.
3.09.2009
What i don't have....
They say 'you should write what you know'. I guess that makes all of us an expert on something, doesn't it? Write what you know. I know what it's like to be content even happy without something but when reminded or assured I can't have it, I ache . I know that ache. I hate it. It eats at me and every month like clockwork, it mocks me. It redifines who I want to be and for a brief selfish moment makes me regret what I'm inevitably not. Logic has no part in this cruel drama for even when I remind myself how much better off I am and how free and perfect my situation already is, I feel the loss. Can you call something you didn't lose a loss? It feels like a loss. And to make it worse, much worse, despite those who are sensitive to your particular emotional ailment, there are those who are clueless and mean well but continually twist the knife in your side. They are not doing anything out of the ordinary, or going out of their way to try to comfort you or pity you; they are just living their lives. Living their lives with their sonograms and bronzed baby shoes and obligatory baby 'pics' that you are sentenced to smile at and comment on. Of course your baby is cute; who's isn't. Even if it isn't, it is. And to start hating a baby, that just crosses the line into monsterous. If one more well meaning mother's group sends me an e-mail to be their friend I'm going to scream. I'm a mother and to even complain about anything must make me a despicable hag. I'm not a mother of a child though; he's a teen. He doesn't require my life in the way an infant would and I should be grateful. I don't want to want this. I don't want to want this. Heaven forbid anyone should read this thinking I'm trying to convince myself of something. I'm aware of that reality which I think makes this reality so much more clear. I don't want to want this. Why is that so hard to believe? Is it because I cry almost every month. That could be it. I hate my tears; they're insincere. Who says your heart knows better than your head?... everyone who has ever had an affair or a divorce. My emotions are telling my mind that it is wrong. I do want this; but I don't want this. Sure, just fill your time with other things; hobbies, career, education. Fill your life so you feel no voids. Sorry. Listen to the wealthy and overworked if you think filling your time or your pocketbook will complete you. Are we doomed to ever feel incomplete? Will God Himself fill those missing pieces in? Are we genuinely missing a piece? If by filling that missing space, will the next void in the puzzle be unveiled? Does this life only offer contentment and satisfaction in the acceptances of our missing pieces?
So here I am, passing up the opportunity to once again sleep next to the most wonderful man in the world. I choose to sit here and try to figure out the complexities of the universe on a brightly lit laptop in a dark and smelly room. It's raining. I love the rain. Rain is such an accutely simple representation of cleansing. It's dark, and late and cold and raining. It sounds melodic and calming and clean. I love the rain. If i walk outside I'll wake him. he'll worry and not get the sleep he needs. Not if I walk out the back door. I think I will. I'm not dressed. Pajamas would attract attention wouldn't they? Just on the porch maybe or I'll just sit here by the window and with the cats, enjoy the cool of the evening. It's such a beautiful evening, morning I should say. It's so late, it's early. My favorite time of night. My favorite time to write.
So here I am, passing up the opportunity to once again sleep next to the most wonderful man in the world. I choose to sit here and try to figure out the complexities of the universe on a brightly lit laptop in a dark and smelly room. It's raining. I love the rain. Rain is such an accutely simple representation of cleansing. It's dark, and late and cold and raining. It sounds melodic and calming and clean. I love the rain. If i walk outside I'll wake him. he'll worry and not get the sleep he needs. Not if I walk out the back door. I think I will. I'm not dressed. Pajamas would attract attention wouldn't they? Just on the porch maybe or I'll just sit here by the window and with the cats, enjoy the cool of the evening. It's such a beautiful evening, morning I should say. It's so late, it's early. My favorite time of night. My favorite time to write.
Urgency of Time
Always the urgency of time. Time ticking, and slipping away. Is it the importance of each moment in it’s self or is it the premature amount of moments that are left? Always urgency.
Don’t wait to write it.
But writing it will take even more time and how can I make money during that time if I’m pausing my life to write it.
Just sit and write it. It will take time and it needs to be done. You need to do it now.
It’s me I think. I don’t like to wait to do anything that I want to do. I do- now. I think it’s me. Why does God get all the blame when I feel like moving irrationally in His name. How often is it really Him? Well, it can be justified, if I write little things that glorify Him and sell them in the meantime, I can generate money to afford to write what He really wants me to write. Wow. It seems so stupid on paper. If God says now, and I say soon, I must know better. I assume He doesn’t take into consideration my 3 second attention span and only my enemy knows how to trip me up. That must be it. Satan is loving that I’m writing this stupid blog of ranting instead of the book. How important I must think I am to acknowledge that he even knows my name. What difference does a girl make for a god in this world? What difference will He make? So often m…you’re freakin’ kidding me!! I couldn’t even finish the stupid sentence without leaving my seat to do something else! How the hell am I supposed to write a book? Short stories, poems, random blog postings…these I can do…with difficulty no less. But a book? And that’s another thing. I curse. I don’t like it and I shouldn’t do it but it’s there in my mind as causally as please and thank you. Hell, damn….yeah, I know, that’s not cursing to most people, but to many it’s unthinkable and unacceptable. One more reason to put it off. I should spend more time in the Word, I should legitimize devotions in my life, fasting might help, prayer. Always in prayer, so I don’t forget to pray. How often has this project been stalled for my self-doubt so I should go pray to make sure when I heard Him, I heard Him. How He must shake His head in frustration at me. Smiling, shaking his head in frustration. Looking at a 5 yr. old trying to put together a 2,000 piece puzzle. That must be how He feels. But still, pushing me from behind. The only obstacle….money. Always money. How faithless I am. How afraid I’ve become.
Don’t wait to write it.
But writing it will take even more time and how can I make money during that time if I’m pausing my life to write it.
Just sit and write it. It will take time and it needs to be done. You need to do it now.
It’s me I think. I don’t like to wait to do anything that I want to do. I do- now. I think it’s me. Why does God get all the blame when I feel like moving irrationally in His name. How often is it really Him? Well, it can be justified, if I write little things that glorify Him and sell them in the meantime, I can generate money to afford to write what He really wants me to write. Wow. It seems so stupid on paper. If God says now, and I say soon, I must know better. I assume He doesn’t take into consideration my 3 second attention span and only my enemy knows how to trip me up. That must be it. Satan is loving that I’m writing this stupid blog of ranting instead of the book. How important I must think I am to acknowledge that he even knows my name. What difference does a girl make for a god in this world? What difference will He make? So often m…you’re freakin’ kidding me!! I couldn’t even finish the stupid sentence without leaving my seat to do something else! How the hell am I supposed to write a book? Short stories, poems, random blog postings…these I can do…with difficulty no less. But a book? And that’s another thing. I curse. I don’t like it and I shouldn’t do it but it’s there in my mind as causally as please and thank you. Hell, damn….yeah, I know, that’s not cursing to most people, but to many it’s unthinkable and unacceptable. One more reason to put it off. I should spend more time in the Word, I should legitimize devotions in my life, fasting might help, prayer. Always in prayer, so I don’t forget to pray. How often has this project been stalled for my self-doubt so I should go pray to make sure when I heard Him, I heard Him. How He must shake His head in frustration at me. Smiling, shaking his head in frustration. Looking at a 5 yr. old trying to put together a 2,000 piece puzzle. That must be how He feels. But still, pushing me from behind. The only obstacle….money. Always money. How faithless I am. How afraid I’ve become.
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