The Nicole Project

I'm a Parrothead - 1-3-11

2011-01-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

I’m declaring guerilla war on my misery. I’m going all out. How? By taking a vacation from my life. One day a week – at some point in each week – I’m deliberately ignoring everything bad. It’s not a New Year’s Resolution. I just miss my God, to tell you the truth. I’ve been avoiding talking with him because even when I’m doing great and feeling fine, as soon as I start talking, really talking, something about the inescapably raw intimacy cuts me to the quick and I start crying. It’s when I start talking to God that I feel things are at their most hopeless and that I feel myself so distant, so terribly far from the me I know I am made to be and from the we we used to be. I just avoid it. I feel clotted with the admonition to praise and worship, with the expectation of gratitude when, if I was really authentic with him as I used to be, all my misery would come out. And I’m so sick of crying. To be perfectly honest, I just don’t know what to say to him. I’m mute but full of unformed words.

And I’m tired of it.

So I’m declaring a state of vacation. I’ve been getting so bogged down with all the things I want not manifesting and feeling tremendous pressure to visualize better and feel good that I’ve snapped.

It’s too much to swear that I’m changing from here on out, that I won’t feel anxiety or discouragement from now on. As soon as I say that, I immediately feel – you guessed it – more pressure. That’s what’s been breaking the steady stones of my peace like a chain gang. And I’m sick of it.

I don’t have any answers, and the questions are still there. What am I supposed to do with my life? Am I going to lose my friends if I keep burrowing into my own head like this? Why am I not my size 6 again yet? Was two years of freedom all I had to expect? Will I always feel so cheated and bitter and dissatisfied by my choice to show love the door? Am I neglecting my relationship with God by avoiding him like this? Am I a patient enough mother to my fur-baby? Am I supposed to be more of a woman somehow?

ENOUGH!

For one day I don’t get to feel bad. I don’t get to worry. I’m not allowed to wonder, see, or feel anything negative. The constant simmering question of, “But if I let go, what if nothing happens because no one takes over?” is silenced. Every time something negative hits my brain, I will just open myself like a tunnel, a garbage shoot, to let it sing right through me. In one ear and out the other.

For one day I get to pretend that I am pretty and thin. For one day, I get to see myself as successful and fulfilled. I get to make believe my God is enough and all his promises are true for me. I get to be Mary and not Martha. I am allowed to dream and imagine that good things are actually intended for me, stamped with my name and address. I get to pretend I am good, and clean, and forgiven of my darkness and my black thoughts toward children and others, that I am pleasing to someone, that I am delighted in. I get to float along like someone who feels they actually deserve good things, like I have the right to dream whatever I want.

For one day, God, let’s get lost. Let’s spin out that lovely bubble lovers are so good at creating. Let’s forget all my failings and all your distance, and let’s make believe we are exactly as we are meant to be. Let’s get lost.

Tomorrow will be here soon enough. But it’s not here yet.

Another New Year, Dammit - 1-2-11

2011-01-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

Another year. I can’t be so naïve as I used to be, wondering with happy anticipation what the year would bring. The old, old exercise of picturing the next New Year’s Eve and looking back on all that had happened. Would this be the year I would fall in love at last? Would this be the year I would go somewhere exciting, do something bold, be the woman I always hoped to be? Would this year I face some challenge and overcome it? The year I know who I am, what I want, where I’m going – would this be that seminal year? Would this be the year I see as the turning point in my life that angled my trajectory up a bit? Would this year my life actually invites me in?

God. How long has it been since I actually asked those questions, when my hope outlasted my winters? New Years 2008, I was giving up on love and dating and my parents bought me The Secret. New Year’s 2009, I was down to breathing in and out in my bed, counting down the minutes until my parole was up. New Year’s 2010, I was shattered. New Year’s 2011, I’m smart enough not to wonder what New Year’s 2012 will herald.

I do want to go forth and reintroduce myself to my life. I want to dig out from my barricaded burrow and see friends again. I want to stretch and start running with something worthwhile in my hands. And at the same time, I don’t want to move my flabbed self, don’t want to go to gatherings where I have nothing of my own life – and therefore of my own self – to offer. Part of me is stymied by the new truth of the falsehood of loneliness I always tried to believe. To accept that there really is no one out there for me, no one to notice me, no one to fight for me means there’s no one to prime myself for. So there is left only me to receive all I’ve worked for. So I am left with work as the only fulfilling thing to look forward to. A project, a job, a mission to better someone’s life. Is it enough? No. Will it be? Yes.

And even though I am trying to choose hope, to choose a belief that good things are coming, I dread the thought of 2011. The only life that ever invited me to its little party was loss and pain and disillusionment.

And I just don’t think I can take another year like the last three. I just can’t.

I mean, there has to be a break in all the bad. There has to be a point where the pain has to end. All those promises about victory and desires fulfilled and purposes found and plans to prosper and not to harm have to come true in this lifetime. They can’t just be for the afterlife. Why on earth would anyone come to God then? If decades from now is the only promise met and want given? There has to be some year in my life where I’m lifted from the rocks and rescued from the waves. That is the seminal year. Not when great deeds are done and great loves discovered. Just when the pain ends.

Letting Go and Holding On - 12-21-10

2010-12-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, my Facebook app, “On This Day, God Wants You to Know,” gave me this word – and it is indeed a “word,” a truth I needed to hear:

On this day, God wants you to know that love is the opposite of logic. Logic is argumentative, aggressive on the mind, splits the world into right and wrong, us and them. Love is generative, compassionate, embracing all creation. Logic pays attention to what is being said. Love pays attention to how things are said. Logic leads to debate. Love leads to communion. Practice love to be closer to God.

And that’s really the crux of it, of this whole devastation of the last quarter of a year. Every time I’ve tried to accept God’s promise to lead me, to make his way known to me, and follow the path of that belief through the last year of my life, I get stuck on the logic. The logic does not add up. I get that faith is not always logical, that is, predictable. But I always held to a certain innate logic in faith in God’s promises: You receive the promise that he will lead you, you get led, and you find yourself in a place that corresponds with the leading. But my experience was not like that. I trusted that promise – the promise that really underpinned my entire faith and confidence in God – sensed exactly what that promise looked like being fulfilled (all the words and stirrings in my soul, the corresponding emotions) and saw my path remain straight and unwavering toward B____. Then come to find out he’s engaged and I can’t feel it’s right to keep drawing to me another woman’s man. The only logical end would be that he leaves her and comes back to me, and I can no longer believe such a development. So that leaves me with an end that completely flouts logic, which sends earth-shattering reverberations back through my analysis.

So to get this word helped me to see what I am to think about that irreconcilable logic: let it go. Now, I am made to be logical. It is an integral part of my nature. It is my design. But I cannot love or trust God again as long as I hold onto this logic, as long as I own these questions and the desperate need for answers to them. So I won’t. I’m letting go. I am letting go of B____, of the question, “What the HELL!” of the dreams I dreamed that are merely still-smoking ash. I’m not owning anymore the how, the why, even the what. I no longer see clearly any of the desires of my heart except to be my size 6 again (every part of my life has been out of balance lately).

God’s going to make it right because he said so. He’s going to repay the decades the locusts have eaten because he promised. He will give me double portion for my losses because that is what he swore by his name. Do I know how? Nope. Am I stuck on that anymore? Not a chance. I’m letting go of the logic that says, “If his ‘leadings’ ended up being wrong or misinterpreted, then how can I trust him to lead me right from here on out?” Not asking that anymore. B____ is gone. So are my dreams. So is my confidence in my desires. So is my ability to give a damn about it. But my God is not.

He’s been there with me through the questions, the darkness, the grief, the anger, the frustration, the sense of betrayal, the inability to forgive. He’s been there when I was trying to reach him and when I didn’t want to be reached. Most of all he’s been with me through the unparalleled and all-consuming confusion and inability to trust.

A few days before I got that word on Facebook, I read an article on a study done by a Dr. Kristen Swanson on the effects of miscarriage on couples. The last question of the interview – and her answer to it – resonated with me.

What do you tell couples who are struggling with the feeling that they are never going to feel good again as a result of miscarriage?

All of us on this planet are hardwired to deal with the comings and goings, especially the living and dying of the natural order. Sudden car crashes, losing a ten-year-old, these things are harder to rebound from, but the natural cycle of miscarriage and people dying in old age – we’re made to heal and deal from that. But we do have a healing process that must unfold. The wailing, and the crying, and the being confused (emphasis mine), the looking for answers – whether that’s in a glass of champagne or running three miles a day – those things are parts of our process, so lean into your grief. You were hardwired to do this and it won’t last forever.

That statement about being confused especially struck a chord with me. A part of me resisted the “moving on” part of that process, balked at the prospect of it not lasting forever. I wanted to be free of the pain, but truly accepting everything as it stands would then mean I had indeed been wrong. That I really was like everybody else, that my story was utterly unoriginal, just a tired regurgitation of well-worn tragedies. I had always been different, and I had relished the idea that that could not only mean I would be weird and out-of-step as I’ve always felt, but also the other side of the coin – that I would get to be special, too, with a story, a destiny that was not to be found around every corner. So moving on and feeling better meant that this was all going to be firmly and finally consigned to the past, no appendix, no addendum, no post-script to save it from utter, meaningless obscurity.

Well. I’m letting go of that as well. So what. It doesn’t matter. And if it does matter, let some other power or party make it matter, because I’m not holding on to it and making it matter.

Shit happens. And I’m taking those lemons and – if not making lemonade – am at least not masochistically shoveling them into my mouth to sour everything I taste.

I would like to believe I’m special. I would like to think I have a grand, unique destiny that means something. I want to do or be something that means something, that makes a difference. I would like to think that there’s true hope, not just the false stuff I’ve been choking myself on. I’d like to think there’s some hope for me, the foolishly, incurably optimistic. I’d like to believe in possibilities again, that everything I want is not met with a resounding NO.

My friend, Delayna, posted this quote on her Facebook wall:

I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times I have been a victim of my own optimism.

Well, ain’t that a bitch. Mainly because it’s true. Of course in this case (as in all the others of my life), I just categorically wasn’t wanted. That may have had something to do with it. I just have to accept that that is my story and my disillusionment after a lifetime of trying and failing to live a life beyond such narrowly focused scope.

There was also a section of an urban fantasy book I was reading the other day that I reluctantly admitted was what I had become, to a tee. It was in Alyson Noël’s Immortals book, Dark Flame:

For example, let’s say you have a girl, she’s made a few mistakes, and she’s so down on herself, feeling so undeserving of all the love and support that’s being offered, so sure she has to go it alone, make amends on her own terms, her way, and ultimately becoming so obsessed with her tormentor, she ends up cutting off all those around her, so she has more time to concentrate on the one person she despises the most, channeling all her attention on him . . .

Yup. That has been me. Every word. And I’m going to stop. I’m choosing to believe there’s hope and a future, and allow myself to want it. I’m letting go of the past so I can reach the future. I can’t keep hold of both. I’m holding on to Jeremiah 29:11, every word:

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Hit it.

Terms of Surrender - 11-24-10

2010-11-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, here’s my concession. And my challenge. I am done trying. Done “putting myself out there.” I’m not even open for business. But if you have anybody for me, God, if my children are important enough to be brought into existence and into the arms of a woman who doesn’t even trust herself with children after the heights of rage one un-housebroken dog has brought her to, if there’s a man who will always be less for not having known me, then let me make him more by making him fight. I will never go through what I have been through, and I certainly won’t skip and jump toward it.

I will be Rapunzel. Let that be my fairy tale alter ego. Sleeping Beauty was weak and no challenge at all. Let him get through the brambles that have grown up around me and then get to my walls. And let him figure out how to scale them without the ladder of my hair helping him along.

Let me not fall so easily, nor even be twanging with awareness waiting for him to do something. Let my indifference be the tower. He wants me? He better be ready for a fight.

Do I think this great hero will come? Do I think he’s actually going to see me, all closed-off and hermit-like, and be seized with the desire to make me his? Uh . . . that would be no. Am I giving myself over to romantic imaginings and wistful thinking, to follow hope like an underground current that this might happen? [See previous answer] But I am saying that that is the only way I will ever take on such titles as wife, or mother.

I am not investing hope or hopelessness in this. Simply outlining my terms for surrender. And I am prepared for them not to be met. But you love a challenge, God. Those impossible circumstances. Well, I aim to please. Go to it.

Heroes and Damsels - 11-16-10

2010-11-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

My mom sent me a video link by one of the speakers from The Secret about using the law of attraction to attract your perfect mate, how to understand it in the context of wanting someone back. I’ll watch it. I have no doubt it will communicate to me you can’t use the law of attraction to lure them back to you, to manipulate them into loving you, which I already knew. And tell me in one way or another he’s not coming back, which will hurt yet again. But at least I can say this. I’m not afraid of the pain.

All along I’ve known I wasn’t afraid of losing him if God willed it. I loved God more. But I sure as hell was afraid of the pain that would inevitably follow. Oh, yeah. So that’s one good thing about wading chest-deep in the waters of grief and anger and pain – a little more pain won’t matter much. Just a raindrop in the flooded sea. You never feel the fortieth lash as keenly as you do the first. It’s the dreadful beginning you have to endure to get to the rhythm of the agony, you have to give the electrical current sizzling your skin right off a chance to settle into a steady hum over your body. I’m already on the rack; what’s another stretch?

I’m sorry, truly sorry, for the wasted legacy of my choice to let it all go and have no more tries at this. And it’s not just my legacy which is tragic enough of a waste, though right now, that legacy doesn’t look like much, all chewed-up and frayed; it’s my parents’ legacy that is determined by my choice. I’ve gone through that sorrow before – understanding that they deserve for me to be married and a mother as much as I. This is not a recent revelation. But I don’t feel the full weight of guilt I always felt before. I have the conviction now of experience to know what I am doing and what I am losing by doing it. Or not doing it, as it were. But you have to understand, I don’t have any more of me to give.

With just one man marked on my path, I am cocooned by pain, regret, foolishness, and anger. I am constantly reminded of what I thought I had and what some other woman actually has now. I can’t escape. I wish every time I see a Nissan Xterra that every one of them throughout the world would spontaneously combust and leave me in peace with no more reminders of him. I am captive, in bondage, curled up in my cramped cage of inward-aiming spikes of memories. An astonishing, obscene number of songs, films, TV shows, places, foods, you name it, has been sprayed with his scent. So you see, I quite literally can’t invite someone else in to leave his mark. I’d have nothing left. No refuges, no places to go from the pain. I can’t risk it not working, and quite frankly, someone else would just remind me of him more forcefully – someone who wouldn’t be as tall as he was, whose voice isn’t as rich as his was, whose hands aren’t quite so warm. No. No.

The fairy tales are bullshit. Men aren’t heroes, and they don’t rescue us. Nor can we rescue them. There will be no rescue for me, except what God sends. And don’t get me wrong – there’s a certain quality to a rescue, an action by God that is epic, incomparable, moving. But I know how I came alive with the other one. The wonder with which I saw I wasn’t broken after all, that I worked just as I ought. And now I am quiet again, quiet all the way through. No one tells you that a kiss isn’t a fool-proof panacea for a narcoleptic princess. Sleeping Beauty can fall asleep again. So it’s hard for me to believe that God would be everything to me like he would for someone he called to singlehood when I so clearly am brought to life by romance. Earthly romance.

So I will be rescued from this dead life by God and be grateful and still be discontented. Because they don’t make men like that anymore. If they ever did. They don’t notice or care about a sleeping girl, and the only hint that they are not following their design is a vague restlessness, a distant regret at their own nebulous failure. There’s no one to teach them to be men, to be heroes, anyway. They see a beautiful woman and they think they’d be a hero for her, but when faced with risk or masturbation, what do you think they choose? John Eldredge had the ailment right, but I can’t believe his cure.

There is no hero to sweep me away. And I probably would not let him anyway because I am closing the door and going to bed.

Those men. They’re so pleasant or organized or kind or goal-oriented, so good to their mothers and sisters, so reliable to their friends. And let’s face it – the “ man’s man,” the heroes, would probably just be brash and arrogant and annoy the hell out of me. They make me so angry, those men, all of them, but how can you not feel compassion for them? A towering, pointless compassion for their plight? They know they are not what they want to be, feel the same frustration about that that I do, and they just walk steadily through their days, doing nothing about it because they can’t. Poor babies. All those passive men who are better at running than fighting, and better at fighting than fighting for anything good or beautiful or worthy. They mill about and don’t notice all the tired women around them who are giving up the battle they’ve been waging alone and going to bed. All those Sleeping Beauties and their baby-faced, beardless princes lost in the brambles.

Deja Vu - 10-26-10

2010-10-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

Déja vu. Didn’t I write that journal entry long ago that “I think it is done. I think I have finally given up”? Except this time I’m not giving into depression, I’m letting go.

I can honestly say I wish I had never met him. Never knew he existed on this earth. I wish our worlds had never abraded each other’s. I wish I hadn’t come alive for a few weeks to feel the sting of death all the more bitterly. Except for the hope for a happy life someday with God, I feel the exact same as I did then. Why did he need to change me so much, to make me so much bigger than my life, when I would only have to shrink again, my skin tightening horribly, to fit it once again?

I’m letting go of all the wonderings about the purpose of all those months, of what God intended from all that. I’m letting go of my love for that man and of my delight in the strength God was smelting in me. I’m accepting my own limitations and weaknesses, my humanity, acknowledging that I guess I’m not as stubborn as I thought, not as steadfast a warrior. I’m letting go of the horrible slithering question of letting down the people God gave to me, letting down my name. At least I’m in good company. How many times in the Bible do humans fall short and God does what he’s going to do for his name’s sake, for his own purposes?

I’m just not getting any direction so I can only surmise God isn’t taking me anywhere right now. Still in the wilderness, but at least he brought me out of teaching. At least that hell is over. I really don’t know how I would have dealt with the last couple of months if I had to face that every day.

It’s tough to leave all the questions and walk away. It’s tough to imagine God could possibly make this right. But he said he would replace the years the locusts had eaten, and they’ve eaten decades. I don’t know how anything or anyone could make all this wrong right. But if anyone is equal to the task, it’s God.

But he’ll have to do it without me. I’m not turning my back on him or what he started, whatever that is. I’m just doing the only thing I can. I’m not certain of one way or another and therefore, I can’t breathe in or out. I’m just paralyzed. I need peace. And I know however God will work this out, it truly will be for the best, though my imagination fails me on that score.

It doesn’t hurt, to let go. The prospect made my chest literally feel as if it was being broken from the inside, like a little beast was cracking my ribs. But it doesn’t now. It’s as if I’d been on the operating table all these months and my heart finally gave out that horrific night of August 26, and since then I’ve tried to keep my heart going, tried to resuscitate, massaged my heart, done chest compressions, defibrillated myself, and the jerking, jarring, unnatural rhythm has kept me from my rest, and now, after two months of this, I’m letting her go, this intense, tired woman whose heart is silent no matter what I do.

He was just a blip on a flat-lining heart monitor, and now I’m still again. I won’t make any more efforts to find someone. I suppose it is tragic, but it’s certainly easier, that I don’t have a maternal bone left in my body, although I need now to start harvesting my eggs. I’m only a few months from 32, and I feel 72. I feel like I should give a press release to friends and family to tell them the patient is dead and we’re pulling the plug. There will be no more dating services, no flirting, no sidelong glances to size up prospects at church or the grocery store, no wondering how it will happen, no waiting for ghosts to come back to life. Because that’s what he’s been – a ghost – a virulent spirit clanking his chains and giving me no rest. Now all I have to do is wait for the echoes to die as well. But I won’t be in pain while I wait for that. And then the waiting will be over.

Faltering (Big Shock) - 10-15-10

2010-10-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I wrote last and this won’t be a long entry. A lot has happened that needs to be recorded but it’s just been too daunting a task. I have to live it every day; I can’t bear the thought of having to relive it at night through my pen. Even now I pause and rally my strength.

For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn’t whistling Dixie: it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times and the not-quite-the-worst of times.

I will start by saying despite my bone-rattling doubts and the horrible experience of having to tell my father I quit my job, despite having hope of starting at Central Corp early as a teller only to have it dashed, setting off a royal panic about my finances, God has provided. Truly he meets my needs every day – and no more. Some truly unexpected things have developed as a result of this ridiculous path I’ve chosen – I’ve realized I like setting my own schedule and working from home. I’ve realized with each passing day that I don’t want to work at Central Corp as teller or manager or at any similar job, and I am really getting into this internet marketing project (experiment, really) that cropped up in the void of a job and my hope as well. And it's such a blessing to have Mom give me work for this time when I get to pursue the information marketing for her, becoming so useful that she interceded with my father – put her foot down actually – and insisted she couldn’t lose me to a job just yet. I have until the new year to see what can happen with this. Oh, the grace. The next day after she told me that (last week) was the first morning I didn’t wake up with a ball of lead in my belly.

And I will never go back to teaching. I would foreclose on my beloved house before I go back to slavery in Egypt. Often I am aware of the hell other teachers are enduring every day while I work on my couch in my sweats, and it’s a blessing.

And my parents have really stepped up to make sure I feel supported in this. Even if my decision to quit my job was foolish to them, they at least understand I truly tried to make the right decision. I was conscientious to a fault and honestly believed it was the right thing for me to do. And as Mom especially has supported me through this and observed the path my feet have gone down, she’s even conceded, “Maybe you weren’t wrong when you thought you heard God.” Oh, the Balm of Gilead that was because I had doubted everything.

How horrible this month and a half has been, with the doubts and the spiritual terrorizing. More than once in this shockingly brief span (has it truly only been a month and a half?) I have come to the point of being just. so. tired. So tired. Ready to collapse. It seems the longer I know God, the less I know of anything, including – maybe especially – how to withstand spiritual attacks and doubts. Before that awful, awful weekend when I despaired of my very life and my faith, I had dealt with my times of weariness, but I had had such faith, such pure faith that my desire to follow was enough and I would be led. I had far more resilience. And even though by this point I have examined again and again what it means to be “led by the Spirit” and my path fit the bill, I knew I was every day finding myself one step farther in a straight path toward B____. How many times did I ask if it was time to move on? How many times did I stand ready, pain ready to be unleashed in my chest but backpack zipped and boots tied, ready to follow? And I am certain that God would not have given me that sign had I not demanded it, and while I am aware of the valuable lesson learned about God’s timing, I can’t help but wish he had just said no. That he gave first-accident forgiveness the first time I really gave into my doubts in all these months of believing blindly in the impossible. And I am also just as certain that it was the Holy Spirit working in me to send that letter to B____ a week and a half before doubt slipped its hooks into me and the bottom fell out of my life. I would have gone on indefinitely waiting for God to bring B____ to me. In my natural self, I would never have thought it necessary or even appropriate to contact him. The conversation with Kelsey was the first nudge, the conversation with Jessica was the second. And then, that Wednesday morning when I was going to help Kelsey get her room in order at the new school, I was getting ready, and standing in front of the mirror I was really wrestling with whether or not this was the right thing to do. The best thing. The decision God would have me make, since of the three who would be affected, he was the only one who knew what would happen. And I felt this almost audible (but it was silent) sense of, “Yes. Do it. Do it now.” I was suffused with a peace, confidence, and sense of rightness, the same certainty I felt about resigning my job. That was not me. I wasn’t building on my good feelings and just trying to convince myself to do what I wanted to do anyway.

And getting that sign that awful weekend was not attended by any good feelings, only bad. That’s not how God works when you haven’t been fighting him.

But logic is a cold and unwieldy comfort in this case. I’m terrible now – so wishy-washy, so unconfident. I’ve struggled for a month and a half for some answers and been met only with silence. I finally had to come to the conclusion last week that just like you’re told when you’re a child and lost, to stand still or go back to the last place you were with someone, I had no choice but to go back to the last place I saw God. And that was right before that weekend. That was when I was believing whole-heartedly for B____. No idea how I would accomplish that, seeing as everything has changed, including me, but there I am. Still no clue. Still wondering if I’m back there in fact, if it counts when I don’t have the solid belief I had then.

Don’t even know if I love him still in the first place. But I had to forgive. Realized that last Sunday. Realized I’d been unbalanced by unmitigated rage for weeks and feeling dreadful about it. I had been mostly angry at God, since B____ had managed not to have done anything wrong or dishonorable in this whole mess. But how do you forgive God? As blasphemous as it sounded to me, I knew that right or wrong I had developed anger, bitterness, and resentment toward God, as well as toward B____ and even my dog who ludicrously remains stubbornly un-housebroken. Who knew you could need to forgive a dog? For Pete’s sake, I had to forgive Faline for having accidents all the time in the house. I had to forgive B____ for being cowardly and weak not to even give me a real try, for going off and fucking some other woman and dreaming of making babies and plans and futures with her, and I had to forgive God most of all for my perception (even though I knew it to be inaccurate, I couldn’t convince my heart of that) that he had toyed with me, that he had played the cruelest joke to watch me languish alone, so alone, for three decades, then dangle like a carrot before me all I wanted, let me cling to that and then leave me desolate and utterly abandoned. Yeah, there was so much anger toward God. Still a work in progress.

As am I, I hope. Because I have now, finally, become what I once was – not a woman, not a lover or a mother, but merely a female human, a female animal. I am ash. God has an unbelievable amount of restoration to do in my heart just to make me fit for my life, let alone for a relationship and a family. I’ve developed a habit of hurt. Pricks of pain have now lost their element of surprise and become commonplace. Everything reminds me of him. It’s not fair that six weeks – six weeks – should have such an obscene ripple effect. There’s music I can’t listen to, places I can’t go, shows I can’t watch, food I can’t eat because they have become nothing more than ghosts of him.

And I’m stressed even more because I can’t find good feelings for more than a day to express my faith in a different future. I think it’s just that I honestly can’t remember how to feel good. It’s been so many years since I was a “happy person” that I no longer have the capabilities to get excited about things like a child, be thrilled or ecstatic or blissful. I try. Man, I try. I try all day. Try everything I can think of. I’ve cut out pictures to make a vision board, I have encouraging verses taped to my bathroom wall, I have oodles of verses bookmarked on my phone’s browser, I listen to motivational tapes, I try to dredge up gratitude and love. I can’t do it.

I honestly wonder if I’m depressed. Laughable that I of all people can’t recognize it. I have hope that it’ll get better. It has to get better. Things have to be easier someday. It can’t always be this hard. There has to be some happiness in store that I don’t have to work and scrape and visualize so hard for. This can’t be as good as it gets.

But oh, is it hard to feel that. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, that God has shown me many kindnesses that I recognize during this time, that he has shown me such grace in my work that I have a chance to pursue this without the horrible dread of job-searching, and yet I can’t be grateful, I don’t feel appreciation, can’t manage to feel joy. It’s never enough.

I’m stone in my heart, I’m enraged at petty annoyances, and I weep almost every day. And I couldn’t even say it’s just one thing. If he resolved the thing I’m crying about on Monday, I’d be crying about something else on Tuesday. Will anything ever be enough? I’m so tired of crying, I’ve started avoiding my quiet times with God because something about being alone in the dark with him just turns on the waterworks. I finally just had to excuse myself today. I had expressed everything, I had communicated, and I was still crying and that wasn’t doing either of us any good.

I’m so keenly aware of my shortcomings and imperfections, of my faltering heart and disappointing faith. I have to trust – blindly yet again – that he is as compassionate and patient as he says, to take my mustard seed and make it into anything at all. It has to get better.

Brooding - 9-2-10

2010-09-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

This entry will not see the light of day. It will not be published on my blog. I will speak of it to no one. It is solely between God and me. I am offering it up to him and allowing him to test it fully for the slightest air bubble, the tiniest bit of dross.

This week has been the worst crisis of faith I have ever endured. More than last June or December. More than my college years when after years of frustration with God’s silences said, “All right, God, you go your way and I’ll go mine, and I’ll see if there’s any pleasure, any relief in a vacation from you.” Worse than when I was sixteen and felt my beloved God pull away and leave me to stand on my faith and not feelings. Nothing, nothing has compared to this. This was so much more than facing the prospect of losing the only man I had ever loved and losing him for good. This came down to the elemental, the very building blocks of why I am still breathing on this earth and walking in hope that one day, one day, I’ll enjoy my life and be satisfied.

If I had truly been wrong about the Holy Spirit’s leading down all those steps of faith that not only was it my purpose to pray for B____’s spiritual healing but also that, amazingly enough, he was meant for me – if I had been wrong about all that, after months and months of utterly humble and faithful service, then I couldn’t trust anything. If I couldn’t trust my changed heart and renewed mind to accurately test the Spirit’s guiding then that meant I couldn’t trust God to adequately change my heart to test the Spirit. And where did that leave me? It left me with the dismal picture of complete surrender for a very long time still not being enough for clear communication between my God and me. And that simply would not do. Nor was it supported by loads of Scripture. I knew – I would stand before God himself and testify – that I had not held anything back. That I had laid all of me open and not taken any of myself back without him handing it back with his own two hands. I had done everything required of me to come under the complete protection and guidance of God. And one of the things I was most insistent about was being led by him in all things and honoring his timing in all things, because it was the only way to be happy, useful, and have peace in my heart and mind.

So.

If I had indeed done all Scripture had required of me, then without doubt, God had as well. He cannot be less faithful than me. And the way he had ensured that we would be guided is by his Holy Spirit. That was the whole point of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. Why did he go through all that hell – literally – to cleanse us of sins and justify us before a righteous and holy God? Just so we would be clean and go on our way? And then what? No. It was so we would be a fitting dwelling place for the equally righteous and holy Holy Spirit. Of all the adjectives to describe the Spirit – powerful, good, godly, loving, compassionate, merciful, wonderful, just – the only word ever put to it is holy. Holy Spirit. And why was this done in us for the Spirit to have a dwelling place? Why not stay in the temple as he had done all through the Old Testament, with a high priest only to intercede for us. For relationship! That is the whole reason God has done everything he’s done with us, all through our history! And what kind of relationship can one have if one friend is able to communicate and be understood and the other is not because he won’t speak, lead, move, guide?

I am a new creation and every hour I have spent in willing obedience has made more room for the Holy Spirit in me. So it is impossible that for all those months when out of faith in God I claimed B____ I was allowed to be misled. Why would there have been so much peace in my Spirit about that choice? There was plenty of time after I made that choice in the spring for my Spirit to have had serious objections, for me to have felt like it was just so hard to believe for this. There were definitely times I struggled, when I looked at my circumstances and saw how unlikely it all seemed. But every time I took my eyes off of my physical circumstances and turned them to my God and his unerring leading, peace returned. Now how is that possible?

Well, a couple of things about this whole situation strike me as especially pertinent. On Friday night my parents informed me of the very real possibility of being transferred back to San Antonio. Now they’re all the family I’ve got and even though I’m far more independent and adventurous than I used to be and could see myself staying in my beloved Virginia alone, I just can’t imagine staying that far away from them for long. So it threw into my mind a host of questions about my future, specifically about how this thing with B____ would work out. So Friday night, I went for a walk as my crisis of faith was beginning, and I told God, “Okay, I haven’t asked you for a sign in all these many months but have been content to let you guide me as you willed. But I’m asking you for a sign of what you intend.” No sign or voice came, and by Saturday night I was in a right state, my insides all churned up. I narrowed it down to the uncertainty that dogged me the most: “Have I been wrong about B____?” I waited but no voice. Then after I returned from my walk and showered, around 2:00 am I thought on a whim, “What have I got to lose?” and looked B____ up on Facebook and the rest is history.

It had seemed that was the sign I had asked for. But that brings me to my second pertinent point: when I had pondered and prayed about contacting B____, feeling in my Spirit freed to do so when for so many months I had not, I felt the exact same way in my Spirit about doing that with the letter Kelsey and I wrote as I had about resigning my job: my hands were trembling and my heart thudding, but still and sure in my heart. And I have no doubt it was the Spirit’s leading that saw me all the way to the public Facebook announcement of my resignation. So I can only assume sending the letter was as orchestrated by God.

But here’s the question: why not just lead me to find B____ on Facebook and begin the journey of grief and acceptance on my own? Why have me send the letter in blissful ignorance? Why complicate B____’s perfect life if he was doing the right thing with the right woman? The letter was completely separate from the Facebook incident.

So here’s what I’m wondering and this is why I am not making this entry public. What if sending the letter was indeed just the next step on this journey I thought I was on, to jolt B____ and make him question everything, and the Facebook incident and the resultant shattering of my world was only brought to me because I insisted? Because I did insist. I came boldly before God and, pointing to my months of faithfulness, demanded a sign. What if, had I not asked, God would never have let me know something so devastating but rather just continued his work? Because if B____ was really doing the right thing, why should he need to be brought to doubt?

And I still haven’t gotten a response to my letter, which was written on the 18^th of August? Unless B____ has changed from knowing me, for the worse, from what he was all of his life, he wouldn’t just not respond. Last July, when our month-long silence turned out to be, of all things, a mere glitch of our phones – which kept happening that summer – he said, “How could you think that of me? I would never just not let you know if I didn’t want to see you anymore. I would talk to you and end it right.” So for him to know now that after almost a year and a half I’m still not over him, and not tell me he’s engaged and happy and for me to move on please with my life is unthinkable. I wonder if he’s having serious doubts now. And I know for a fact if he broke another engagement, he would have no confidence left in his decision-making ability or – even more devastating for him – in his honor. Something inside him would be broken. I wouldn’t be surprised in that case if I didn’t hear anything from him for a long time because he couldn’t make a decision one way or another. Maybe, when I heard in my Spirit that question, “If B____ is really what you want, are you willing to wait as long as it takes?” meant, good Lord, it would take a long time. There’s far more baggage and entanglements now that he’d have to muddle his way through.

If he is indeed for me.

See, this is the crux. I have prayed and stubbornly believed that B____ will be reserved only for the One for him – a woman who will reflect God to him from a place of credibility, who will support his spiritual growth. Now I don’t know this woman from Adam, but I do know she has not come near to fighting as well as I have for this man, and is she really more capable than I have become of reflecting God in her entire being for this man? After all, if it would do no good either way, if it wasn’t really that big a deal, why are there so many verses about one spouse being sanctified by the other, by an unbelieving spouse being led to God by a believing spouse. Now, I am not advocating missionary relationships. They seldom work. But neither will God ignore all my pure prayers and allow B____ to marry someone who will only encourage him in his lukewarm spirituality. It is God’s perfect will that B____ be edified in all ways – including spiritually – by his marriage. So whether I am for him or not, at least he is safe.

I am the last person on this earth who wants to hold on to something just because it makes me feel good, just because I want it to be true. Which is why I am lifting this up to God more stubbornly than I’ve lifted anything up to him and trusting – against what physical circumstances seem to indicate – that he will move me away if it is not from him. He will not waste me.

He will show me the way, and he will prepare either her heart or mine for the loss of him.

Engaged - 9-1-10

2010-09-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

B____ is engaged.

No response to my letter. Just happened to check Facebook on a whim.

No greater crisis of faith in my history. And too many what-ifs on both sides for me to know what to think.

The days since Saturday night have been rough. Pictures in my head. Questions I can’t answer. And the promise to myself I will suffer no longer for love. I have suffered enough. I have been through enough.

This shook me to my core because as if B____ wasn’t enough to drive me yet again to my knees, this threw into question everything about myself and my God. What about all those promises God made that he would guide me and make his way known to me? Did I not offer myself to him as wholly and sincerely as I thought I had? Had I misinterpreted those words? Had I really not been led by his Spirit all those many months? Could I not trust myself to listen or God to lead in the first place?

But I have spread the matter out before God, stated the case for my innocence. My journal attests to this fact. Not one move I made, not one desire I kept, not one path taken without seeking his counsel. I have done everything God himself said in his Word he expects of a person. And he said he was trustworthy.

None of this is the result of my own folly or blind stubbornness. So this is all part of his perfect will. So then did he intend all along for our story to end in mist and silence after all?

I have only questions and quail at the thought of what answer I may receive for them.

All I have to stand on is my God. And I said it myself, put it in writing even, that this man is my Isaac, my dearest possession even though I never had him. My beloved. And I swore that I would lay him down freely, hands off, if God asked me to. I don’t know if he’s asking me to do that, but it is the only course left to me. I cannot be convinced he is mine or not with all the what-ifs cluttering my head. And I would not be a faithful honest friend if I did not do as I promised.

But I see now that those weeks and months where I kept sacrificing B____ as my Isaac were nothing to doing it now. I had not yet given myself fully into the faith that God had made a promise of him to me. Now, though, I truly have nothing left. I have now, officially, sacrificed everything to God. My job seems a paltry thing beside this, my beating, bloody heart. But I have no choice.

I am trusting that God brings great good out of this cesspool of my pain. It seems the very definition of cruelty, of abuse, to keep me waiting for thirty years, suffering and alone, only to show me like a flare of fireworks in the night what I had always longed for and believed in no more, just to steal it all away, leaving the night darker for my dazzled, burned eyes, and then for good measure, keep me in this mire of love and prayer and sacrifice for fifteen months just to say it has all been for nothing.

I did not hold to him of my own will. I would never do such a foolish thing as holding to something that was never meant to flower when only pain would result. That is why I asked at every turn, upon every waking for God’s way, God’s will, God’s counsel and wisdom. I have held nothing back all these long months. Every door has been opened to him. I have done everything I needed to do. And my God is good and trustworthy. He is not cruel. Somehow, someday, he will turn this right and God Almighty, I will be happy one day. I will know what it is to see the good life after so many years in the dark.

You want impossible situations, God? Well, have at it.

Freedom - 8-25-10

2010-08-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

I stand on the pier at my marina. The moon is full, the sky clear, and ice-blue light is washing the cooling sweat from my body. All alone, I gaze around me in all directions, every sight as well-known to me as it is well-loved. And as I stand here, so still, I’m reminded forcibly of all the full moons I took into myself two years ago, hungry and desperately unhappy, misery sealing every airway like a plastic bag. Trapped I was, on every side. I so clearly remember running here, bathed in the blessed heat rolling over me in waves. I was closed in. My miserable circumstances hemmed me in. I was in the thick of them, no immediate way out.

I raise my eyes to the moon, aware of the dulled edge to my once-keen joy, made all the sharper because it was one of my only joys. Palpable unhappiness and an utter helplessness in it does that to your remaining pleasures – they are never so bright and rich as when isolated by pain.

But now. Now. Everything is different. I am aware of all my friends getting ready for bed while I am running free, the weight on their chests growing imperceptibly heavier as they prepare for their last night before the prison doors open to welcome them back.

And I am not one of them.

I am awash in wonder. Their brief parole is over, the summer all gone away, draining like the last soap suds in a sink of clean dishes that are about to get dirty again. Tomorrow, they go back to their classrooms and their rules and their mad students and their merciless parents. While I stand here and gaze at the beautiful, beautiful moon. Has a moon every been so beautiful? Even last night when I ran to find a flooded marina and followed my desires and stripped and dove into the waters all alone? Even then? No. I think not.

I wake up tomorrow a free woman. God, how many cloying days and claustrophobic nights did I yearn with all that was within me for release, for freedom, for rescue? How many tears did I cry, how many minutes spent with my eyes closed against my reality as I gathered the frayed threads of my soggy strength to face the next hour?

And as I stand here, full of what I could not find for so long, it occurs to me just how far removed I am from that woman curled up on the pier. I dreamed of rescue from my current circumstances and could see no possibility for it than to marry the love of my life and be a stay-at-home wife and mother. After all, that was my long-held and cherished dream. I truly wanted that. So how could anyone but a man be the agent of my escape? It may seem archaic, but it was my dream.

Who knew that two years later, long after I lost hope of every getting out, the man came. But he did not rescue Rapunzel from the tower where she was trapped. And who knew that the mother in me – the most lasting artery in my body which pumped the richest blood through me – would be dead now for a time? Who knew that no escape would come except by God’s own hand? In all the days and months and years I longed for escape, I never dreamed of actually quitting without a visible safety net. Only when I had experienced God himself for a year and a half and finally understood for myself what his Spirit feels like guiding my decisions and feelings could I take such a deep plunge. God himself has rescued me, has fulfilled in his own time all his many promises. My beloved ezer. My hero. No man did this. Nor I. It truly took all God is to do these things in my life.

I will stand tomorrow a free woman. I will stand amazed at all God has done with his own hands and all he is preparing to do. I expect everything I have never known. I will not be disappointed. Because I am free indeed.

Weirdness + Weirdness + Weirdness = Peace - 8-25-09

2010-08-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Weird things have been happening, more in my own head than anywhere else. Even though I had let my principal and team members know of my decision to resign a couple of weeks ago, actually making it public last Wednesday really threw me for a loop. I was basically saying, “What the hell have I done?” I still had the sense of rightness about the decision, but there was a whole round of taking thoughts captive that I knew I had to steel myself for. And the thing that really gave me the most vicious uppercut was the thought of what my parents would say. I kept waiting for them to call me up in a panic but I guess Mom hasn’t seen my Facebook post or continued reading my blog because I haven’t heard anything. And it was making me insane. I had felt a moment’s relief when I realized I could tell them I wasn’t expecting anything from them. I wasn’t expecting them to pay my mortgage indefinitely, or “help me out.” My God can take care of his own. But that moment ended when I remembered they had given me the 20% down payment on my house, and what could I say that would answer their accusation that I was just throwing away tens of thousands of dollars? On came the weight again. I couldn’t really feel the glory of the freedom I now had because I just kept seeing the calendar lose pages and saw my last paycheck inching closer. I really did keep giving it up to God, but at this point, it just wasn’t clicking like it had been, and I seriously wondered, am I maxed out? Have I taken on so much faith and so many remodeling projects in my life at one time that I don’t have anything left and I literally don’t have any more strength? I kept thinking I just needed to “change my strength” like C.I. Scofield says in his sermon, but it wasn’t happening. And I was just tired. Like, in my brain. I couldn’t seem to hold onto any clear images of the outcome I’ve been believing for. So not only was I thinking, “What do I do?” about the job situation, but “What do I do?” about the faith situation. Honestly, I just wanted to stay asleep and not wake up. I wasn’t depressed and I wasn’t rethinking my decision. Every time I went through the thought process, I was always sure I had felt God’s Spirit guide me. It was just that waking up just meant taking on the work load again. I knew that wasn’t how it’s supposed to be. If you’re truly trusting God, he gladly takes that weight. But it seemed like work to figure out how to do that.

Not real fun.

And then it kept getting worse. When I made this decision to quit my job, I truly knew in my spirit that it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. And at the time, I truly believed Central Corp. would work out. I’d gone through the whole interview process, I’d presented the possibility of getting a job there early before the training program, and I’d gotten such a positive vibe. I was just waiting until after Labor Day when the final decision is made. Then the head of HR called me last Friday. Turns out my resume had a typo on it: the wrong college info because I had used another woman’s resume for formatting purposes and had forgotten to change that info as I was overwriting with all of my information. Small thing, but apparently the president himself tagged it as he looked through all the resumes and he’s a stickler for detail. The HR lady and the head of the training program evidently felt foolish for having overlooked it. She was a little hesitant, to say the least. I sent her my corrected resume right away and in my email said that anyone who knows me can tell you I pay a great attention to detail. And I was just pissed. I was pissed at myself for making such a stupid oversight, but I was also royally pissed at the prospect that two years of diligent effort and enormous personal and professional growth would be jeopardized by something so ridiculous. And I snapped to my mother, who was there when I got the phone call, that if they rejected me for that stupidity, then obviously they weren’t the best thing for me and God has something better. And I’ll be honest here: I have to admit since I made the decision to resign, I’ve wondered if Central Corp. really is the best thing for me. What? How can I say that? I just keep getting an inkling – don’t know why – that perhaps they were just the catalyst for getting me to jump off the cliff but really, they aren’t where I can truly break free and be all I was meant to be. I do feel the need when I talk about that job prospect with people to qualify the choice: to explain how unique the company itself is even though it is banking. And I believe that. I believe that this particular company is unique and very special and I would be able to help people there. I would be so much happier there. But this latest thing has kind of put a bad taste in my mouth. I am a hard worker and very good at what I do, but everyone makes mistakes, and I get the impression with this company that even though there is a true sense of family, there’s probably not much grace given. I have already been bludgeoned for years in a profession where your slightest mistake is grounds for micromanagement and censure from students, parents, colleagues, and bosses. Goodness, I don’t need to feel like a failure or a disappointment anymore! I’m depleted!

And, too, this time, this total risk, has seemed more and more to be the time to jump feet-first into my dream. The thing is I can’t really say for certain what that would be. Having only been in teaching, I am woefully underqualified to direct my own life. I’m so glad God is there to know where I would best fit because it is one of the hardest things I’ve had to figure out (and I still haven’t figured it out) to understand how all my many qualifications in teaching translate into a job I truly want. I don’t know what job would truly make me happy. So I’m not really worried about Central Corp. working out or not working out. I’m confident that God is in control of that. But it does stress me out to figure out what to tell people. Most people are under the impression I’ve got a job at Central Corp. because I’m speaking out of faith, and in the beginning that faith was stronger. But where is the line between lying and speaking in faith? It doesn’t sit well with me, especially since I’m wondering if Central Corp. is in my future.

And things still kept getting worse. I love my dog, honest I do. But this housebreaking thing has put me squarely at my wits’ end. Nothing has worked. To the point that I had to keep doggie diapers on her at all times. And then I’d take her for walks and young thing that she is, she’d be wanting to dart everywhere. She’s not the worst leash walker I’ve ever seen, that’s for certain. But even what she would do would just make me snap. I’d haul her back on the leash, practically strangling her and feeling horrible about it. I just had no patience. I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve felt a plume of anger spray out of me and said out loud on my walk, “I cannot have children.” To the point of saying, “I don’t think I can ever have children. I just can’t!” More thoughts I had to take captive.

I realized I felt like a failure as a teacher, now a failure as a dog owner, and I already feel like a failure as a mother. What kind of mother would I make when the slightest aggravation makes me snap? I already realized that this was an area of healing for sure. No doubt about that. And that healing couldn’t start if I kept claiming that identity as a failure. But boy, did I feel like a total failure and feel like I would always feel that way. Lots of taking thoughts captive there, and quite frankly, God, I’m tired. Two nights ago, on my walk, I stopped in the meadow, the moon full above me, no one around, and I just yelled out, “I. Don’t. Want. To feel. Like a failure. Anymore!”

I’d already been thinking that the most effective thing to do during this stressful time was to praise God. Praise him for who he is, for what he’s done for me, for what he is doing now for me. For the future he has planned for me and the ever-present help he offers me. For the freedom that is mine now. But when I would praise him in my prayer closet, as awful as it sounds, I just couldn’t think of a lot. I was just so damn tired! Then it occurred to me to pull out my praise and worship CDs which had been collecting dust.

Now, I’m pretty picky with my praise and worship. So often it just sounds corny or overwrought. But I found some I remembered liking and put them on and just listened to them as I got ready for bed. Next day, after volunteering at the Georgian Manor, I went ahead and drove around like I like to do listening to music. Well, three hours later, I honestly felt better. Clearer. More hopeful. Less burdened. Thank the good Lord above, it was about time! And who knows why during that long drive, I got the idea to write a Bible study on surrender. Huh? But really, if I had to choose between Central Corp. and a job where I talked about what God's done in my life and mentored and helped other young women, dude - no contest.

Well, [another] weird thing happened. Last night I had the urge to go for a run alone – hadn’t been going much to tell the truth, because I feel bad leaving Felene behind and sometimes I don’t want to deal with her – and who should I run into but Kim Fuller, who lived next door to me back when I lived in this neighborhood with my parents in my teens. I had run into him walking his dog two years ago right after I moved in and fecal matter hadn’t collided with the fan, and in two years I hadn’t run into him at all, even though we both go for walks frequently and at the same time of day. But I did last night. Weird. And almost right away we started talking about jobs and God. How did this happen? I don’t know. I had been feeling like I just wish I wasn’t still alone in this journey. Even though there’s no better teacher than God himself when it’s just you and him, it can still get lonely when you start thinking about all the people who aren’t behind you. And I thought if I could just have another human being hear my story and tell me they thought I was doing the right thing, it might make all the difference. Nothing like support right there beside you. Nothing like it. By the end of the walk with Kim, it had become evident that this was a divine appointment for the both of us. And he said something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. He was reflecting on a preacher whose testimony centered around being embroiled in a couple of lawsuits and God made it all work out, and he said compared with that, my testimony would really be something. To do something so risky, and in this life, he said, you can’t avoid risks, would really show what God can and will do. He said in his life, looking back, he can pinpoint certain times in his life that make him say now, “I wonder what would have happened if I’d just . . .” As he has been feeling frustrated in his work now, finding himself without the security he had expected to find after 29 years, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe he might be a little inspired by this decision of mine. Because it is risky. I am single, it is just me. No one else will pay my mortgage, no one else will pay my car payment, no one else will buy my groceries. I’m it. So to do what I’ve done is beyond risky. It’s just foolish. But as John Eldredge says, “In the past year or so I’ve made a number of decisions that make no sense unless there is a God and I am his friend.” Amen, brother. Amen.

I cannot adequately express just how wonderful it was to hear Kim share his perspective. Oh God, there is nothing like not feeling alone. And as I continued to praise him, it became exponentially easier to take thoughts captive, to catch myself thinking negative thoughts and turning them around. It became easier not to have the negative thoughts in the first place. I no longer felt stretched thin, no longer felt resigned to waking up and going into a whole day of thoughts. And I began to see the truth: that this really is just God and me, and that’s enough. I realized for real, more than just my declarations and my tired eyes, that my spirit hadn’t objected to this decision about my job at all, even through this roller coaster, and that my God is mighty to save. He does delight in impossible situations. My situation should not work out. It should be impossible to find a job in this economy where headlines blare thousands of jobs lost. It should be impossible that my needs should be met when I have no – read it, no – income. But as I told Kim, it is only in the impossible situations that there can be no mistake that salvation came not by human effort but by God himself. And I find I dread less the confrontation with my parents. I can leave the anxiety and anger with them and reply calmly and joyfully that they better get ready because they’re going to see a light show soon to rival 4^th of July.

I am (impossibly) full of expectation for this amazing life I want to live, where every day has something to delight me and sink my teeth into. I am confessing here and now that I believe in all 7,000+ promises of God in his Word. They are true. And they will be true for me.

Weird, huh?

Memories - 8-21-10

2010-08-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

When do memories start to lose their potency? When you cram in enough new memories? I don’t know . . . I think even if they get crowded, they never get crowded out.

I got to thinking today about my odyssey through the treacherous world of dating. When I think of all the men now, they’re like ghosts – half-formed spirits, indistinct around the edges with only a pale glow to let you know they were there once. Against their vast, hazy backdrop, B____ stands solid, warm, whole, strong. Nothing indistinct about him. But they were there once, filling my vision one at a time like a horrible receiving line at a Tim Burton party. And I’m staggered again that I endured it for as long as I did. How can you go day after day into an unrelenting misery? Oh – that’s like my job, isn’t it? I endured dating for years and I endured teaching for years. Honestly can’t say which is worse. It’s like having my arm sawed off versus being splashed with acid: hmm, which will hurt less? How did I do it?

I didn’t see that I had a choice.

That’s how I did it. For years, hating every minute of it.

But seriously, I can’t see how I did it with dating when I take into account the sheer number of minutes and hours spent in unmitigated dread. But I did. And shy, innocent, inexperienced little me went out with three times as many men as any one of my friends. Insufferably arrogant John who claimed indulgently that he had the “playbook” on women because he had so many women around him. Tom, the handsome, wired little Italian whom I met at a bar who chafed my tender skin as he ground a drunken kiss into me. Ridiculous Gustav who finally spurred me to call It’s Just Lunch to say that if they set me up with one more guy like that I was going to terminate my membership and expect a refund of my $700. Awkward, earnest Scott at the beginning of my online dating trek who was in such a different league than me but I had no way of knowing that until I stumbled on his creepy MySpace page. Slacker Will who had no real ambition beyond doing construction work but who seemed, oh, I don’t know, good enough, I guess, in all other respects because he’s at least better than the others. Just to name a few.

I just shake my head in wonder at how honestly diligent I was in trying to lower my expectations. Everybody so glibly admonishes you “not to settle!” But boy, I sure did try hard to do just that. My crushing inexperience couldn’t support my bone-deep yet persistently repressed sense that this couldn’t be it! I went out with so many men and felt with all of them that I was behind colored glass and they didn’t even realize they weren’t seeing me clearly, let alone desired to do so. No wonder I got so smashingly depressed so many times. No wonder I saw a psychiatrist for months (not a psychologist, mind you, because this guy needed to prescribe drugs). No wonder I went on anti-anxiety medication to deal with my dread of dating and my swelling conviction that it was hopeless: both my ability to lower my expectations and my chances of finding anyone who could make me feel anything. No wonder I hit rock bottom as everything else in my life crumbled to the ground.

And then came B____.

And I knew. I knew suddenly that I could never make myself settle and that I never needed to. I knew that my mother was right when she said, “There’s a reason they call it ‘falling in love,’ because it literally feels like you’re falling and you can’t stop it.” I knew that everyone who said when it happens, you’ll know and it’ll be so easy, was right. I knew that all my sky-high expectations had for all my life been right on the money. I knew that it really did come down to one man and only one to awaken me with a kiss, to send blood rushing through my icy body. I knew that all the stories and songs and poems were right. I knew I was home.

As far as the east is from the west is how different B____ is from all the dozens of men I had tried to date, had tried to match myself with.

And at any point in this whole journey since B____ left, had you asked, I would have said without hesitation that the worst B____ had put me through, the worst that marriage would cough up, would still and always be better than what I had been through. And I can say that with even more conviction now.

There is only one man for me.

And his name ain’t Gustav.

Man In The Arena - 8-18-10

2010-08-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

I’m all a-flutter. That is what the gracious ladies of the South called it, this feeling, this sense of being stitched to a butterfly’s wings, eyes wheeling and hands flapping, trying to regain your center and call your world to order. But I do not flit and sigh and wring my hands. Rather, I am very still and quiet as I survey the dust motes of my life, floating, hanging suspended where I flung them.

I finally made public my decision to resign. And I wrote the letter to B____ and watched Kelsey tuck it into her bag to mail for me.

Oh, goodness. My, aren’t we bold.

I am standing on that precipice, hearing the wind pick up. I’ve come out from every other person and every other faith and am fully exposed on the crag. I am so alone in this decision, the only one ready to pay the price. And even though those I’ve told support me in this, they offer that support because my conviction has already set that this is what I need to do. That support of necessity is of a different mold than true support. I breathe deep in the longing for someone to look in my eyes, see deep enough to know what they’re saying and tell me, “I know you did the right thing. It’s all going to work out, I know it.”

My parents will find out soon from my Facebook post that I resigned. I breathe. I wait. I do not tell them of this process because they will not agree. And practical people that they are, they will urge me with renewed vigor to pick up the job search out of desperation. And I will falter. I cannot afford to feel bad, I cannot believe that I am that adrift that I must grasp for any bleached piece of driftwood. If I listen to them, then the fate they so fear will be upon me and I’ll lose everything.

Oh, God, I have really done it now. I have risked everything, my livelihood, my home, my heart, my future, my very life. This is what it feels like to throw it all in the fire and to see what will come out. I have thrown my self in the there, too. This is what it feels like to do all you have feared, all at once – completely sure you’ve done what you had to because there was no other course of action you could live with, and totally terrified.

One way or another, my life is utterly changed now. And I will never go back. And now I’m off the land, off the shore of my home country. I’m free-falling. I’ve jumped to my death. This is my suicide note. This is the death of my old life, the death of the ordinary day, the safe choices, the banked hopes. I’ve withdrawn all my dreams and am throwing them in the street.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-- Winston Churchill

And Away We Go - 8-17-10

2010-08-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Throughout this entire journey, my feelings have been all over the place. I mean, literally visiting every possible location on the vast plane of the human heart that feelings can touch. Not just up and down, but sideways and diagonally and inside-out.

Well, this month marked what has to be the final frontier of my feelings. I’ve gone through times where my feelings for B____ have become frozen, numb, and even just perfectly still. But ever since July slid into August, my feelings have been such that I honestly wondered if it’s too late. After all this, if it’s over, just like that. I didn’t even seem to have feelings that had frosted over. Because they didn’t even feel present.

Of course, the logic was impossible. You don’t fight for as long as I have for the prize to merely dissolve so late in the battle, just when you’re getting close. God doesn’t work like that. Not when I’ve submitted all my feelings for B____ to him since the beginning, only to have him handed back again and again. If B____ was truly gone, never meant to last for me, God would have gently guided me in another direction if I had truly submitted my heart to him as I had.

But even though the conviction was there, it simply felt like too much time had passed, like we would look like strangers on the inside to each other instead of old friends. And I had begun to wonder (the irony doesn’t escape me) if I had been alone too long and couldn’t respond, even to him.

And I will assert this: I will not go through a rerun of previous episodes. I will not have gone through all of this only to end up hoping hopelessly and faced with a wall. Ain’t gonna happen. I have been through too much, dammit, for that to be the ending of this epic story. Oh, hell to the no!

But nevertheless, while not really worrying and fretting about it, I couldn’t see how it would flow again. Maybe I couldn’t visualize B____ as discernibly changed. And if he’s not changed at all, then there could be no other plot, however I’ve changed.

So when I was having the top of my head blown off by Kelsey and Jess, a part of me still wondered if it had been too long and if I was even capable of responding, of feeling anything. Of “working right.”

Well, then, my imagination tripped along the path of fantasy and “what if”s and, oh Lord, wow. It actually surprised me at one point that I hadn’t sent the note yet to the response of “YES!” Like, he wasn’t actually here? That was just a run of my imagination? Oh. Whoa. Okay. I couldn’t even get to sleep till 2:30 last night because I was under the onslaught of dead, old feelings flaring to life.

Oh, Merciful Lord, I’m flying high. I’m gone. You’ll have to take care of me because I’m already at the precipice. Forget just walking around the mountain to get a feel for it; I can feel the rocks splitting under my feet as I curl my toes over the crumbling edge of the cliff.

Goodness, what a risk love is. And what a risk it keeps being. It won’t ever stop being risky, but what choice do I have? “My lover is mine and I am his” (Song of Songs 2:16). Oh, goodness, here I go.

Dude. Whoa. (Take 2) - 8-16-10

2010-08-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

I talked to Jessica today. So interesting how just as I was feeling this summer – despite my times of weariness – that I am on the cusp of seeing all my seeds sprout, and just as I had really been feeling that my separation experience was drawing near to the end of its purpose, I’ve noticed more opportunities arising to share my journey. Opportunities arose before but I literally felt like Zechariah whose tongue was silenced until his old, barren wife, Elizabeth, gave birth to their son, John the Baptist. It was like I couldn’t speak of it. And a good thing, too. I needed this separation experience to learn God’s voice, yes, but also my own and also to know – to really, truly, experientially know – what it was to stand on my own conviction with no support. Because even as I’ve shared and received support or silence, no one agrees with the wisdom of my decision to hold onto B____. They can’t know it hasn’t just been me. They can’t countenance that great, misty, distant God actually guiding my footsteps, my decisions, even my feelings. So I’ve been able, through that time of utter silence and total dependence on God to the exclusion of everyone else, to share gently and confidently my story. And this separation experience has also been so very vital, too, because by this point, God himself has become an indispensable character in the story, and it’s mostly – all right, entirely – unbelievers (to one extent or another) with whom I’ve had the opportunity to share my life. I have gently but with conviction shared what God has done for me, what he’s been for me, what I know of him. I haven’t preached it, but neither could I have left it out for comfort’s sake. It would be like saying a sentence with only every other word – it wouldn’t make any sense. This year, this life of mine, is in no way just about me – about what I’ve done, how strong I’ve become, ways I’ve grown. Half of the words are mine and half are God’s.

So as I’ve been pondering this question of action toward B____, mulling over Kelsey’s brilliant and totally unexpected perspective, Jess had the opportunity to share hers. And just as Kelsey shared a perspective on B____’s position to me, Jess showed me a perspective on me to B____. As I told her Kelsey’s thoughts on the letter, Jess agreed and then said, “You know, I know you pretty well, and so did Brock. And I know you’re the type of person to have very strong convictions, and once you’ve made them they’re not budging. So he probably took that letter as your conviction that it was over for good and you both had to move on."

Wow.

As soon as she said it, just as when Kelsey shared her perspective, I could practically hear another puzzle piece click into place. It made so much sense.

And it got me to thinking: my main concern about B____ - to contact or not to contact, or rather to initiate or not to initiate – had revolved around what was best for him. Because it’s not just my life that would be affected; it would be his, too. And I knew one of the areas God would work on in B____ would be his inability to take a real risk without having some sort of guarantee it would work out. And I felt that once God worked on that, B____ would get to the point of missing me so much he would be willing to bust down the door to get to me. But after talking with Kelsey and Jessica, I started to realize something.

When I first shared my journey with Mom and Dad in June, I had started thinking about their inevitable question of why didn’t I do something about it if I was convinced of B____. But I also started to consider for the first time the possibility that maybe I would need to make the first move. And now I’m seriously beginning to believe that is indeed the way here. Maybe that particular remodeling project in B____’s heart – the ability to take a risk – would manifest itself in his choice this time to actually respond and give it a real go, even if some questions and risks lingered.

And I realized something I had not realized before about B____’s nature. While his inclination toward seeing to everyone else’s needs before his own (sometimes to the entire exclusion of his own) has been thrown way out of balance by the nature of his life (like an obsessive-compulsive being asked to clean out your pantry), it is nonetheless an inextricable part of his nature. The nature that God put in him at the start. God had a vision of the man B____ was meant to become when he was knitting him together in his mother’s womb. He didn’t just throw a few elements of human nature together and hope it would turn out. B____ was intentional. And while his care-giving and selfless nature has been thrown out of balance a bit, it was intended all along to be a part of him.

Which makes it all the more logical that B____ would be the gentlemen he’s always striven to be. It is not his nature to barge into my life if he thought it would just set me back and screw up my life. And taking into account Kelsey’s belief that that letter closed every conceivable opening, and Jess’ thought that B____ would know enough about my own nature to accept non-negotiables as part of the package, it does indeed make sense that he would need an invitation.

After all, God very rarely smashes in the door of someone’s heart or life. He “stands at the door and knocks.” He is a gentleman; he waits until he is invited. B____ is the same way.

So the question shifts from, “What should I do?” to “What will I find when I do it?” I may have some preconceived notions of what I’ll find. I may have envisioned B____ just sweeping me up in his arms. I may have an image of him growing with God as I have. I may find him quite unchanged on the outside. It could be that this all has been a time of preparation and at the slightest tap from me, the old shell shatters like blown glass. So I’m not taking my expectations to B____. I’m taking them to God. Because I know what I’ll find there. I know how he is and how sturdily I can count on him. And I know everything will happen as it ought. After all these years of struggling with that declaration, I can finally stand on that.

You know, last night, I was reading my Bible, just idly flipping through, and landed on a story of King David in 1 Samuel 25 that I had never heard of or encountered myself. When King Saul was pursuing David and his men, David was camped out in the desert. He was near another man’s land and decided to watch over and protect this man’s property, livestock, and servants. Then later, David asked that the man show him some hospitality and was rebuffed. He grew angry and said he had basically wasted his time and his resources and was going to punish the man for this unforgivable offense. Then the man’s wife, Abigail, showed up, just as David said this, and extends her hospitality and loyalty. And David realized all of that investment had been about to be wasted and God stepped in just in time to spare him that regret of waste. And it just struck me: how close I’ve come to throwing in the towel, or at least just going through the motions, compelled but without belief, and all of it would have gone to waste and this glorious life I’m standing for would slip back into the mists. But that’s what’s so great about God. He has his own purposes and he “knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). And I’m moved by his compassion that even when we fail, or we’ve done everything and are still waiting to see results, he steps in and makes our efforts worth it, brings them to fruition. He is, indeed, remarkable and completely trustworthy.

Dude. Whoa. - 8-15-10

2010-08-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Hmm.

I went over to Kelsey’s today to plan for her second year of teaching and her first in second grade. I truly believe, just as Delayna made being in a sorority worth it more than a decade after joining, so has Kelsey been the sole reason I was called back to teaching one more year. Those two have been my most fulfilling experiences in their respective settings: sorority and teaching, because of the mentoring they have allowed me to do for them. And I know one of the reasons Kelsey has been moved to second grade is so that some good can come out of all those years of whole-hearted effort, so all the intense attention to detail and planning I put into my work does not go to waste. As I was getting out of my car at her insanely charming house, I thought how my coming over to plan is as much a blessing to me as to her.

After we planned for several hours, we grilled up dinner and started to talk about things other than teaching. Maybe I had a premonition or maybe this is just the Secret at work, but I so clearly imagined talking to her about B____. And so I did. How lovely she was to talk to. She’s so much older than her years. She had very wise insights and really listened in a way I still struggle to achieve. I ended up telling her everything, from beginning to end as, really, I had never done. Even those who know everything were there when everything happened, so Kelsey is the first person I’ve talked to about it from beginning to end.

Which brings me to my hmm.

Ever since I had first shared my journey with Mom and Dad back at the end of June, I had seriously considered the question of what to do, actually do, about B____. I’ve thought, since mid-spring when I began to accept that there was never going to be anyone but B____, about the question of: “If I truly believe B____ is it for me, then why don’t I contact him?”

Two reasons.

One, the main one, has always been my concern for him. Ever since I first felt him pull away that June, I’ve basically been the one pursuing him. Even though he was the one to send that first text in July, I was the one putting myself out there, saying I wanted to try again, and when I left it at the end of August because he wasn’t giving himself at all and found through September and October that I still loved him, I was the one to email him and come to him on his terms as a friend, until he left for good with another woman’s name in his mouth. So for most of our relationship except at the glorious beginning, I was pursuing him, and feeling on some level that he was humoring me – that he genuinely liked having me around but also hated to reject me. So I’ve thought all this time that if I yet again made the first move, he would never realize what it means to reach that astounding, devastating place where you want something so bad you’re willing to risk anything. I felt that that is when God’s journey would be at the end of this path: when he could take the risk into the unknown. I’ve had no doubt that this whole time has needed to be a God-and-B____ thing, with no direct interference or distraction from me.

In talking with Kelsey, though, I came to realize that his nature is not like that. He would never compromise what he would believe is my healthy, moved-on life for his own sake. God can change him for years and B____’s still not going to be comfortable or even aware of how to put his needs first. That’s something he needs a doted-on only child to show him, I think. Kelsey felt that that letter I sent him was airtight: that it shut all windows and doors to B____ and if anything were to happen, he’d need a little “in.” Maybe a big “in.”

The second reason, far more hidden and insidious, has been the fear of what I’ll find if I reach out to him again. I can shout to the heavens all I want that I believe and declare that he was meant for me, and there’s still going to be a quiver or two at the thought of coming down out of the clouds and actually taking a step of faith on the hard ground of reality. My deepest fear was of finding out he was still with the other woman, or engaged, or worse. Such a horrifying thought kept slipping free from the tethers of pure faith. I could literally feel my heart melt away within me.

So how interesting that on a whim I was cleaning out my email inbox a few days ago and came across B____’s first Match.com email to my personal email account. I had encountered it by accident a couple of times previously and skimmed right by it with a hard flutter in my belly, but this time, on another whim, I clicked on his profile link, just curious as to what I would find if anything. There was no picture – like he’d taken his profile off, but it said he hadn’t been active within three weeks.

Within three weeks. Really.

Hmm. Hmm.

Now, I don’t know why he stopped with Match this time. Was it because he was just sick of it? I can imagine that of him. Was it because he found someone else? Could it be that I’ve ruined him for anyone else?

At any rate, it doesn’t seem like my second reason for not initiating contact is viable anymore. And when I saw that a few days ago, I still didn’t think of contacting him. Not until Kelsey gave me her opinion and then helped me write a more direct yet concise note than I would have conceived, did I actually, truly consider that talking with her might be that sign I’ve been asking God for that would show me what to do regarding this decision. Everything Kelsey said seemed grounded in my spirit. I didn’t ever get that sense that she doesn’t quite know what she’s dealing with which would have given me serious reservations about any advice she might have given me.

So now that note is burning a hole in my hard drive like my resignation letter did once upon a time, and I ponder this in my heart.

What should I do?

Epiphany - 8-5-10

2010-08-05T23:04:00.001-07:00

Epiphany. Like, total epiphany. I mean, you look up the word in the dictionary and you’ll see this entry.

I actually had it the first week of summer and just hadn’t gotten around to putting pen to paper about it.

I do not want kids yet.

And I haven’t changed my mind with my moods.

I was at Rachel’s house helping her out with her four kids. We watched a movie and just chilled out. It was nice. And her kids really are adorable. Like picture-book adorable. Funny with the twins stealing every flip-flop they could find and Braedon totally absorbed in his DS game, and Savanna settling in my arms and resting her head on my chest as we watched the movie.

And I somehow left there with the dawning conviction that I absolutely, positively did not want children of my own yet. Rachel’s kids are just normal kids. They’re not demons or completely out-of-control kids. But Rachel still had to constantly redirect them, discipline them, negotiate with them, explain to them, remind them, warn them – oh, my God, it’s what I’ve gone through every frickin’ day of my job for six years! I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. I don’t care that they would be mine and I’d think their poo was precious. It ain’t happening yet.

Now let me clarify exactly why this is such an earth-shaking revelation for me specifically.

Every woman I know has said they want children, just not yet. That’s all I heard from every woman who didn’t already have kids: “not yet.” “Someday.” “Down the line.”

I never understood that.

See, I’ve never known a time in my life when I didn’t wish I had kids right then. But I was always too young or didn’t have the man yet or wasn’t established in my own life. There was always a reason (or two or three) why I “wasn’t ready.” But I felt ready. So all I’ve known is being held back by life. Like life just couldn’t – or wouldn’t – catch up with me. Never have I really known contentment in my childlessness. I only knew resignation. I knew about the frustrations and fears and stresses and sleeplessness. I just loved and wanted my unborn children more.

So now, to actually say and believe that I do not want children yet . . . well, I can’t get used to the feel of the words on my tongue. I keep saying it, hearing my voice wrap around the words. I do not want kids yet.

And that wouldn’t even be so noteworthy, even knowing the background behind the statement, if this newfound conviction wasn’t so passionate. For a long time now, probably two years or more, I haven’t been able to find children cute or charming. When they do cute kid things like holding their jumbo marker in their chubby fist and scrawling out backward letters, or skipping words in their oh-so-adorable baby sentences, or giving you sticky kisses – doesn’t matter. If it’s cute, I turn away. And turn away with an angry disgust. The sheer vehemence with which I instinctively stay away from all children is Exhibit A in the case against teaching for me. It is evidence for how badly scarred I am by this profession.

This isn’t normal. It isn’t right. And it’s not healthy for me, because I was made to have children. That certainly hasn’t wobbled. My children are still and always will be the reason I have gone through all of this. This life of mine is my legacy for them.

I just can’t stand to think of them right now in all their helpless grasping and arguing and whining and disobedience. Can’t do it. Sorry.

My love for children is merely lacerated ribbons of flesh. I am wounded down deep into my soul. I need more healing in this area, by far and away, than in any other area of my life. I need God to restore me, to rebuild me, so I can see a child and soften, so I can smile. And I know with all certainty – no question, no debate – that if I stay in teaching, I will not heal. In fact, every day I am around children at this point is more damage done that will have to be undone. Even committing this job to God as I did last year will only do so much to arrest the gouging, and there will be no healing. I have to get out, and get out now, to begin healing because it’s going to take time. I can’t see having children inside of several years, and I’m already 31. I don’t want to waste any more of my time with my children.

So this all brings me to the most direct, visceral test of my faith yet, a test I needed this past year to prepare for. I truly believe I need to resign my job as a teacher and trust that Central Corp will take me on “at need.” This goes against EVERY grain I have, and yet I feel so good about it. It feels so right. As soon as I really considered the idea, my heart took flight in the rightness of this unforgivably foolish decision. I’ve kept thinking for the past several months, when Central Corp got stirred back into the mix, that if I stayed until October and then left for the Management Training Program, that would be harder on everyone: my principal scrambling to fill the position mid-year, my teammates who would have to renegotiate the team dynamics with an unknown, my kids who would have just gotten settled into the way I run things, the parents who would have started becoming comfortable with me, and most of all for that poor new teacher who is getting thrown bodily into the deep end. Because it would be a brand new teacher – at that point in the year, every experienced teacher would already be under contract and the bright-eyed young lemmings would be the only ones left to jump off the cliff. And this year is going to be hard enough with even more SOLs and more pressure on the third-grade team for the scores from last year. I can’t imagine how hard that already tremendously difficult year would be if that untried newbie had to hit the ground running. And I wouldn’t be there to mentor him or her like I did last year, and no one else is really good at that.

So just from that angle, it would be best for the whole school, the third-grade team, and the class of unsuspecting demonspawn if my replacement, bless her ignorant heart, had a fighting chance. And a running start. Even if she didn’t have the common sense to use it to run for the door.

And for me, I need to get out. Just as Jessica finally bit the bullet and didn’t renew her contract so she could be a free agent for other teaching jobs, I have to do this for my own health. Because my perspective on all children, including my own, is far from healthy.

And one thing I have learned from this past year is that God is worthy of complete trust. Not provisional, not conditional, not occasional. Complete. And as John Eldredge says, “In the past year or so I’ve made a number of decisions that make no sense unless there is a God and I am his friend.”

An email I received a couple of days ago seemed to foreshadow this idea: “If someone wants ‘A’ to happen, yet they prepare for ‘B,’ they will always get ‘B.’ Prepare for ‘A.’”

That is exactly this situation. As long as I’m holding on to this job I abhor with every fiber of my being, when I know it’s not God’s will for me, simply because it’s “safe, then what I’m really saying is, “God I don’t really think you’ll make Central Corp happen. I don’t really think you can take care of me unless I’m taking care of myself first.”

Central Corp is what I want. I have persisted for two years, longer than I’ve persisted with anything except this cursed job. And I believe God will meet me at the crucible of my faith. I won’t see him do amazing things until my actions correspond with my enormous belief. This is not coming out of some foolish, rebellious, prodigal-son short-sightedness. I have always been sensible. Never in my life have I ever even casually entertained the notion of leaving a job unless I already had another one lined up. That’s just foolishness. But isn’t there that funny paradox that the world’s wisdom can be foolish in God’s eyes, and foolishness in the eyes of the world can be the direct command of God? Look at Abraham. He was called out of Ur, the only place he had ever known, to a land he had never been – the wilderness – based on a promise and his belief in that promise. Do you think he had a lot of people slapping him on the back, saying, “Atta boy, Abram!”? Uh, no.

I know that I know that I know that I can’t be in a classroom one more day. I also know that I know that I know that God is my friend and is waiting to show off in an impossible situation. And I know that I know that I know that this act is an “act prompted by faith” (2 Thessalonians 1:11), not an off-shoot of immaturity and folly.

It’s what I need to do, and I’m ready to leap into the chasm of God’s blessings head-first and blind-folded. The time for my freedom is at hand!

Flip This House - 8-5-10

2010-08-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

I think we can establish one thing very clearly: this past year has been about so much more than B____. Yes, he has been the jewel in my crown of hard-won, day-to-day faith, but this past year has been about a complete overhaul of my life, my faith, and my self. It’s really no wonder I’ve gotten so weary, that it’s taking a good bit of time to manifest my vision: goodness, there’s not one area of my life – physical, emotional, financial, mental, spiritual – that is being left untouched in this massive remodeling project called my life. It really doesn’t make much sense that I can’t make myself watch those HGTV flipping houses shows for the vicarious anxiety it dredges up: after all, my whole life is one big flip. I mean, budget concerns, great vision, messes galore, rotten foundations that have to be blown away, unexpected complications, going over budget for the tenth time in one sense or another, and the inevitable point when you’re standing in the middle of the rubble, totally unable to picture the soothing butter yellow you were going to paint the house, and thinking, “Dear God, what the hell have I gotten myself into?”

And how to flips work? How do they actually happen the way you pictured it when all you see are gaping holes in walls and floors, gutted bathrooms, dust everywhere from the necessary demolition, and one more complication you just can’t see your way out of to just finish the damn thing?

Faith. And faith. And still more faith.

Still Standing... - 7-30-10

2010-07-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Thinking on Ps. 27: 13, and how it says, “I would have lost heart had I not believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” It does not say, “had I not seen the goodness of the Lord...”

Significant, that. It focuses on the belief as the reason for taking heart again.

And Ephesians 6:13 about spiritual armor. It says, “...so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Seems redundant, but it’s not. It says you first “take your stand” – everything is clear, the prize is vivid in your mind, your muscles are fresh and ready for the fight. Then, “to stand,” when you’ve done everything you can do and your sword is dangling from your numb fingers. To stand.

Utter exhaustion. Weeping in the dark, terribly alone in the struggle, wishing so desperately God would light the beacon: It is done. I’m so desperate for this to be over. And it’s not even the big things I’ve been belieing for that are cutting me down – it’s the little things that pluck quietly at you that finally break you. But I see that and I mustn’t break. I won’t. I can’t.

Delayna posted on Facebook this quote:

Between you and every goal you wish to achieve, there is a series of obstacles, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacles. Your decision to be, have, and do something out of the ordinary entails facing difficulties and challenges that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

Ain’t that the truth. And I want God’s timing. I just can’t think right now of how much longer it might be. Because when you get right down to it, I’m overhauling my whole life. Every area. Big things and little things. And I can’t take a day off when I get too tired and need a break; I’ve tried that. If I’m not focusing on and visualizing my future, all I have to occupy the 60,000 thoughts I fill a day with is my present, and that’s a guaranteed slump of depression. My future is my only hope, my only pleasure. Not focusing on that is not an option. And this is going to take a while. I don’t do things by halves, do I?

I’ve felt all summer that I’m on the cusp of finally seeing all my seeds beginning to sprout. Maybe that’s why things have been so hard lately – a last-ditch effort to break me.

I’m so tired. I just want it to be over. All of it. Even the good things. For goodness sake, I’m sick of some of these goals – they’re thirty years old! Let’s have some new struggles, or oh, let’s not have any at all for just a little while. Let’s have a day or two or three where I get to just bask. I don’t know what it’s like to wake up and find it all easy. And even though life is not stagnant and you can’t float along in complete ease and harmony indefinitely, I need a little floating. I need a little ease. I need not to be alone.

I did ask God to talk to me, to help me. And even though what I really want to hear, oh, Lord, how lovely, is, “It’s all over now,” I am sensible of his validation. Here is the order of my random flippings through my Bible:

“He has alienated my brothers from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My kinsmen have gone away, my friends have forgotten me.”

- Job 19:13-14

“What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all!”

- Romans 3:3-4

“...we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

- 2 Corinthians 10:5

“You are only looking at the surface of things.”

- 2 Corinthians 10:7

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

- James 1:12

That’s God. That’s his message. Is it over yet? Doesn’t look like it. But I am not alone, and I have hope, though I can’t feel it now. Because I’m not standing my ground. I’m just standing.

Coincidence - 7-28-10

2010-07-28T23:01:00.000-07:00

Coincidence is never just coincidence.

This morning, I checked Facebook and Lacie had posted this:

I’ve really been dwelling on Ps. 27:14. Read today in my Bible’s Lexical Aid that the Hebrew word for “be brave” is the same one used 12 times in Exodus to describe Pharaoh’s stubborn, stout-hearted refusal to let the Israelites free. Neat that the Psalmist uses that same kind of picture of stubbornness to describe what our hope and expectancy in the Lord should be.

Same verse I found last night, different version. Lacie’s version was probably New Living Translation: “Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord and be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”

So my stubbornness is being tested yet again. I should be used to this. Oh, well. Into the breach once more, boys.

It did help, though. Thanks, God.

Nevermind, I'll Do It On My Own! - 7-28-10

2010-07-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

Jeez. Seriously, why do I bother? What is it that keep itching me to share? Have I just been alone too long?

I shared my Rumplestiltskin story I’d been working on every day for several weeks with my mother. The thing is practically writing itself. I had asked God if I would actually sit down and write, would he please help me with connecting all my ideas. After all, that was always my trouble with writing: waiting until I “felt” like it or knew beforehand what I was going to write. But one thing this past year has taught me has been not to worry about my last step, just my next one. And I’m tough enough and mature enough not to worry about the feeling and just get down to it. And God has come through. I’ve barely done any editing and it’s really knitting together. I know my target demographic and have read many books like this one, and mine could stand with them in this genre.

And I get that Mom and Dad aren’t big readers and when they do, they prefer fast-paced, humorous spy thrillers. So I understand that this wouldn’t have been their cup of tea anyway. But my mom read all of it and just couldn’t find anything really positive to say. My dad didn’t make it past page 12 and had only critique. I don’t know which is worse.

And it wasn’t even like I needed their approval to pin down my own opinion about my work. I knew exactly what I thought of it before even thinking of asking anyone else. And I couldn’t tell you why exactly I did decide to share it. Did I just want a little encouragement, an “atta boy”? Did I want someone, anyone to know what I’m doing with my top-secret life? Maybe I simply needed someone to support me, to believe in me so I wasn’t doing it all on my own.

That’s 0 for 2. Not a great track record.

And it didn’t change anything. What they thought changed nothing of what I know about my writing. But the thought that came to mind and felt good because it felt like truth was, “That’s okay; I’ve been doing this on my own this long. I can finish it up that way.” I do feel that way. I’ve been alone all along, I’m still alone, and I’ll be alone for yet another while. But a tickle between my shoulder blades hinted that that probably wasn’t the thought God wanted me to hold onto.

But jeez! I have to wonder if I just want too much. I’m still waiting. For things I’ve waited, at best, a few years for, and at worst, my entire life for. I’ve never been satisfied with some. All has been my only option. Does that explain why I’m still waiting, dammit, for my life to begin, for the good life to reach me? If I had only wanted a little, would my wait be over? Is it just that I want so damn much that it’ll take my whole youth to arrange it all? That can’t be right. All along I’ve been standing on the truth that God won’t waste me, and if I spend my entire youth waiting, I’m sorry – I may have no choice, but that’ll be a bit of a waste. I may be utterly incapable of changing my nature to slake my hunger for the whole world with hors d’oeurves, but am I always to wait? And wait alone?

Maybe I was right in sharing my journey and just incorrect in my choice of who. I’m beginning to suspect that through this whole separation experience when I’ve had no one to back me up but myself and God, when I’ve had no one who even knew anything about what my life had become, perhaps my parents and I have simply gravitated to different frequencies. How disappointed I’ve been, and how many disappointments those were stacked upon. Maybe there’s really no one yet to understand me the way B____ did. Maybe Mom and Dad just can’t help me because they don’t get me.

It’s not their fault. It’s not. I should say Mom made a point of conceding her reading preferences and my superior knowledge of my audience. It didn’t keep her concession from seeming like a pathetic consolation prize. Her comparison with a previous scathing review by my aunt of another manuscript of mine didn’t make me feel a whole lot better. And she still didn’t mention the quality of my writing or the originality of my reinvention. So I guess all her concessions just weren’t enough.

I’m still on my own and only God is holding me back from telling all the useless people milling about, “Go screw yourselves. I don’t need anybody.”

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!”
- Psalm 27:13-14
.
“Let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
- Galations 6:9
.
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Jesus Christ.”
- Philippians 3:14
.
“Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

- Hebrews 12:1

An Impossible Wish Come True - 7-14-10

2010-07-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

I have a dog. Have had for a couple of months, just hadn’t gotten around to journaling about her. She is, quite simply, an answer to a long-standing prayer.

Ever since Cinnamon died six years ago, I have wanted another dog just like her, even though that was nothing short of impossible since Cinnamon was a grade-A mutt. We never knew what breed she was, though we suspected. So how could there be another like her? What other dog could have fur just that length that lays just that way? A plumed tail like that? Fur at her little floppy triangle ears that crimps when wet? Delicate paws and liquid brown eyes? Not to mention all the indefinable quirks and corners of her personality that made her such a perfect lady?

Well, the answer is this dog. Felene is like a little fawn in her grace and elegant little built. Except for being a bit lighter in color – a true fawn rather than dusky Cinnamon – and missing the little tufted feet, she is a dead ringer for Cinnamon. I even wanted a slightly larger dog than Cinnamon because I started running after she died, and this one fits that bill, too. She is lovely to look at and enchanting to watch, as so many of her behaviors smack of Cinnamon more than any other dog.

As if the looks weren’t enough, her personality is perfect. She is far more intelligent than Cinnamon, which suits me fine, as I’m more rigorous in training her than I was with Cinnamon. She already seemed to know some commands before ever coming to me and is learning more. She is smart and spunky, sweet and loving, and pretty to boot.

It is impossible that she should be sitting at my feet now, gnawing on her bone. She should not exist. There could only be one random mix of breeds that led to Cinnamon, but I’ve had two. My parents marvel at how like Cinnamon she is, she melted their hearts from the first. This is the Secret in action, you skeptics. It took six years of careful breeding to get just the right mix of looks and personality. She was made just for me – designed to order, specific in all her parts. And she came to me at just the right age – 9 months – so puppyhood and all its frustrations were fading and I’d still have her for almost all of her life.

It is possible – to put an impossible wish out to the great cosmic void and have it return to me. And it took six years because it took such careful breeding. It dizzies my mind to think of all the care that had to go into the design of this dog. But she was worth the wait. As soon as she came into my life on May 24, I didn’t think any longer of the long wait. It didn’t matter. She was worth the wait and she was finally here.

Shame - 7-10-10

2010-07-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

Wow. I officially regret sharing my journey. And isn’t it always the way that the attacks you expect never come but other attacks come from completely unexpected directions with deadly accuracy? Mom suspected the truth about B____ before she even got to those entries and shrugged, saying, “You love you who love.” But it was the entries about my darkest moments, my deepest recesses of despair, that gave my parents the most explosive ammo. Several days of their direst warnings never to share those things with my husband for the ammo it would give him, and to take my blog off the Internet now, and I’m wishing with all my heart I had kept it all to myself.

I understand they’re reeling in shock right now and letting their fearful thoughts of how a few decisions can utterly wreck my entire life run wild, and I get that this is probably just part of the journey. I understand that at this point all they have are my weaknesses and haven’t yet seen the solid strength and toughness I have gained. Still, I completely own that my belief that I did get confirmation after confirmation that God wanted me to share this journey AND my feelings that I/he made a terrible mistake are currently irreconcilable. I’ll just have to suck it up and trudge through to the time when I see it actually helped matters that I shared with my parents.

But here’s the thing. Hearing them warn me and admonish me about my choices then and now makes me feel, for the first time in a year and a half, exactly like I did at the time of those journal entries. My parents’ concern that I keep this from my husband stemmed from their fear that one day he might use that against me and turn his family against me and take my kids away. Wow. So no one would love me if they knew the full truth. If they knew just how weak I would always be. Never mind the fact that I am in no way the same person now, after only a year and a half, let alone after more years. Never mind that it is only those dark places that could help others in the same place relate to me, as I try to help and guide. Never mind that the testimony of what God has done in a life never broken or stained can’t compare to the beaming hope found in the testimony of someone who had reached the far reaches of hopelessness, despair, and brokenness only to have God somehow put that life back together even better and brighter than before. Never mind that there are so many broken people in the world who would slap my face as soon as look at me if I was Miss Mary Sunshine, but who may just hear God in my voice, see him in my skin, feel him in my eyes.

Never mind all that. All that I believe. But boy, did they make me feel damaged again, as damaged as when signs of my despair were still raw and real. I felt damaged, wrong, ashamed, even as my belief was untouched. My belief that my life is a miracle of the first order, my belief that I am not who I was, that God has forgiven and cleansed and justified. Just now, that untarnished belief is buried under the feeling of being a second-class citizen, in the same manner as one who can’t share hopes and plans of family and marriage until she “gets a date first.” I feel like I don’t have the same rights as others to the life I dream of – my mistakes are too great, too dark, too irredeemable. I found I couldn’t look at my reflection in my rearview mirror on the way home, that I couldn’t watch TV or movies that had a hint of romance in it because I didn’t feel worthy of it, that I couldn’t even look God in the face, so to speak, because I felt so wrong.

But you see, I am not so weak as I once was. I know how to take those thoughts captive and not let them build on themselves. I know what I know, and dammit, I know the truth!

I know I have every right to the recklessly happy life I dream of and have been working towards for so long. I know my God has made me pure, looks on me in love, speaks of me with bursting pride. He sees no broken toy soldier, but a lovely china doll. I know what they say about my husband is so wrong I don’t even need to consider it. They are projecting their own newfound shame of their unforgivably weak daughter on everyone else in the world. Other people wouldn’t see me in a permanently yellowed light because of this. I know for a fact that God would not start this amazing work in my life, make me wait so long, just for a fair-weather man who would overlook all I’ve overcome to focus on one weak moment. I am so much safer than that.

Not to mention I couldn’t love like that. My mother often cracks up at what comes out of my mouth because I’m so honest, even about myself, and I don’t hide my flaws or shy away from telling it like it is. That’s because that’s who I am. I couldn’t ever trust a man who didn’t know the worst of me because I would never know if he would love me “if he knew.” How many of us dread those three words in our relationships and as a result never let someone know the full glory of us? And I wouldn’t go years holding back a dirty little secret from someone as close as a husband, to have to be handy with an excuse if he asked about my scars. I can’t sustain that omission for a lifetime.

And what they don’t know is that their point is moot. I already told B____, after a few weeks together when he was sharing his deepest wounds. I knew he needed to know at that point in the relationship so he could make an informed decision and leave me then before it went any further if he couldn’t be with someone with those kinds of experiences. Do you know what he did? He got up from his chair, came over to me, and kissed my wrist. He looked in my eyes and said he was so sorry I had to go through that. And he didn’t leave. And then later, in a completely separate conversation, he brought it up and said, “You know, when I see that, I don’t think how weak you were. I think what a survivor you are. You go into that same situation day after day, try to do a good job, you don’t quit.” And you wonder why I insist he’s the best. Who else would have done that? Who else would not have hesitated but offered such freely-given compassion from a good, pure heart? Somebody else who knows about wounds. Somebody who understands beauty is sometimes stitched together with jagged thread. Someone with great worth. This is how I know his worth.

I defy Mom and Dad’s fearful belief. I defy their sense that all I have accomplished and gained is not enough to overcome my past, that in the end I am only worth what I can hide about myself. Despite their shame of me, and the shameful feeling it inspires in me, I stand tall with unbowed neck, knowing I am stronger than the both of them put together. They have always remained strong and hopeful, but I have reached depths they never dreamed of, every bone in my body broken or twisted, and still managed to rise to this point, where I can be just as isolated as I was before but know this time I am not alone and I am tough enough not to break. God’s love and great power will be clearly visible in my life because people will know how bad it can be, how hopeless, and God can still reach down and rescue you. No depth is too far for him to reach, no dark too thick for him to see. I am proof of that.

So let them be ashamed, let them be alarmed. I will not cower, I will not cave. I will do things my way and my way is God’s way. I will demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive.

This is by far the most cunning attack of the enemy, to use the honest concern of my dearest family, not to stop at making me feel unlovely and invisible, but damaged goods and ashamed of what I cannot help. But I recognize it for what it is, and I am not done fighting.

I am Nicole.

The Last Day of School - 6-18-10

2010-06-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

The last day of school. Good God. Even though the last couple of weeks have been the easiest of the year, with no SOLs to prepare for, no lessons to plan, and far less stress about paperwork than everyone else has been feeling, I’m exhausted. I should have left school today jubilant, exultant, singing to the heavens, wriggling with joy. Instead, with every mile I put between me and the school, my mood darkened and my brow lowered. I could read the signs: I was brooding. And have been since I left.

And I have better indication, ironically, than I’ve ever had on any other last day because I am going to be contacted by Central Corp. for a second interview. I never wrote about that, I realize. Other things crowding my mind, I suppose. Yeah, the day after I wrote that journal entry during Spring Break about job-hunting oh-so-reluctantly with Mom, Central Corp. returned my call and invited me in for an interview the next week, and that interview was smashing. My, how I’ve grown in two years. I don’t even recognize myself now. And my worry aboutnot being able to distinguish between a job I wanted on its own merit and one I just saw as an escape was nullified. I want this job. I want to work for this company. I want to be a member of this family. And as the weeks wore on after the interview, I also came to realize that what I had at one time thought was my ideal job – College Textbook Sales Representative – for which I really would be perfect, was actually not so perfect for me. I don’t want to have anything even remotely connected to education, even college education. I shouldn’t have to devote one more iota of my energy to education when I get a new job and am released.

I have done enough. I have served my sentence, done my time, without complaint for many months, and I am due for parole. It’s time for me to rejoin the human race. And I truly believe I have earned Central Corp.

So why should I be brooding? I think part of it is I am so ready for my life to change, for all these countless seeds I have been faithfully planting to begin sprouting. I honestly don’t remember what it’s like to have fun in my life or to look forward to my life. I know now what it is to have faith that something good is in store, but the feeling of experiencing it in the here and now has been harder to find in the last two years than Sasquatch. I’m ready to know what it’s like not to have to marshal my forces every damn morning, not to dread my life, not to be alone in this. So part of my brooding is that readiness.

But most of it, I think, is just plain exhaustion. I think, now that I don’t have to muster the troops for tomorrow, and then another tomorrow, and still another tomorrow, now that I’ve reached my last tomorrow, the sheer mass of the year is now crashing down on me. I’m allowed now to really feel just how hard this year has been.

But through that diamond-hard weariness is the truth of which I can be proud.

This year has yielded a lot of harvest. This past year has taught me to suffer in silence and alone. How to be stoic where I once was whining. I know what it is to fail and not give up, to fail and get back up and try again tomorrow, to fail and get back up and try again tomorrow, to fail and get back up and try again tomorrow. I know now what it is to keep falling short of the mark and still see the worth in my efforts, to still see the integrity of my purpose – not to be a great teacher or impact these children’s lives, but to honor and glorify God, to obey what he has told me to do. I know now, as I never did, that the commandment to love your enemies is not a suggestion and isn’t always defined by those who hate you. Sometimes it’s those you yourself hate. I learned what it is to struggle with hatred that just wouldn’t go away and let God show me how to show love even when I didn’t feel it, because he loves them.

I know, because of this year, how to believe. When all fails and sight is gone and there’s nothing to believe in anymore, to yet believe. I have learned how strong I am and how much stronger God is. I can stand and fight and be stubborn and not give in. I’ve seen worth in what I’ve thought worthless and hope when hope had run out.

I have discovered my name and my purpose. I know my identity in Christ and for the first time understood that Jesus dying and rising again wasn’t just to save me from a life of sin. That never had the impact on me it had on others who’d crawled the green mile of life. I was a goody-two-shoes raised in a bubble – what great sin had I ever managed to get into? But because he did what he did, I have God’s Spirit in me always, even when I fall short of the mark for the four-hundredth time and just don’t see how to do better. I never have to be separated from God by anything now, which is so very essential. I couldn’t do all this without him. I wouldn’t still be breathing on this earth if not for him staying close by my side.

I’ve learned that when my resources are low and all is dark and the last feeling has fled and I feel so alone, I can still be absolutely certain God is right there, so close he is breathing on me in the blackness. That is huge – that my faith and my feelings can diverge and after thirty years, my faith wins out.

I know now what it is to stand on what I know in my heart in the face of 360˚ opposition, and not back down.

Yes, I have seen worth in the worthless and I will continue to see more worth emerge for the rest of my life from this worthless career. I have been changed, callused from my trek in the wilderness which is probably not over yet, and my family and my people will benefit from that for generations to come.

So let the brooding, bone-deep exhaustion wash over me. It’ll end and I’ll still be here, waiting for the first bloom to finally show.

Should I or Shouldn't I? - 6-13-10

2010-06-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

A couple of words I’ve received lately have been urging me to “share the burden” with someone. At first I was completely confounded: with whom would I share this utterly bizarre, foolish path I’ve been trekking alone? Who would possibly not only accept it but embrace it with me?

As I thought and prayed about it, my parents kept coming to mind. But how can that be when they’re already questioning my mental health? Jeez, they’d commit me straight-out if they knew the full truth.

And that’s what has kept nudging me: they don’t know the entirety of the situation. They’re like the blind mice from the story who are feeling different parts of an elephant and claiming it’s a rope, it’s a tree trunk, it’s a snake, never getting close to the truth because they’re blind.

It wasn’t until I suddenly was faced with the possibility that this separation experience, which very recently has begun to wear, might be nearing its end that I was able to even conceive of another scenario. It could be that my parents, who’ve supported me in every other venture before even when they’ve had their misgivings or reservations, would just feel relief that they finally know the nature of the beast they’ve been struggling with.

And what if they don’t in fact think I’m crazy or dangerously foolish or mentally unbalanced when they read my entire blog of these journal entries? What if, once they’ve gotten over the shock, they prove once again to be the essentially practical people I’ve always known and get down to the business of dealing with what is actually on the table, whether they expected it or not? Maybe it’s time they see that the beast they’ve been mistakenly identifying is actually the elephant in the room.

I’m praying over this. That really goes without saying. My concern is to protect them from as much worry and anxiety as I can. I’ve been trying to do that since December. But how effective have I been when they know no rest or peace about my situation, however much I reassure them that everything will work out and I’ll be fine?

I have thought of all these journal entries to be not so much my story but God’s. This is what will show everyone when this journey is finally at an end and all my longings and efforts resolved that it was the Lord who did all this. That all of this was impossibility squared and he made it work out perfectly and beautifully. I’ve thought how much of an encouragement my story would be for so many people struggling for faith in this faithless world. But maybe for my parents, that would best be accomplished if they didn’t learn of this journey at the end but rather now, at this particular point, so they can help me along. It was from my meeting with B____ and all the wrestling that followed that my parents’ faith actually began to be revived. My father prayed over me in December, taking authority over his family in the mess of my hemorrhaging heart. My mother offered godly perspectives and advice even though she struggled so much with God. So it could indeed be not only for my relief but for their great good that I bring them into the light of full disclosure. I need a little more confirmation from the Holy Spirit before I commit to this; there’s no going back if I do. There’s no “unknowing” if the worst reaction happens. But it is actually possible that they would take into consideration the nature of this woman they’ve known for three decades and remember that she is not foolish or heedless. She thinks and considers and gives heed to wisdom. And if she says there is no one else, maybe, just maybe, she’s right. And maybe, just maybe, it is her stubbornness that writes a happy ending.

And who knows? Maybe if all three of us were united in this purpose that has no remedy, no cure, it’ll bring all this to its crescendo all the more quickly. After all, when two or more are gathered in his name, there the Lord is. And when my father prayed over me with my mother that horrible December night, my broken heart was bound far faster than it otherwise would have. I shudder to think how I would have scraped through my days and awful nights for however long if he hadn’t brought me under God’s hand and if I hadn’t remained obedient.

But I am deeply concerned for them, for their peace of mind. And my question is which option will build their faith, show them God more clearly, and bring them peace of mind: keeping them in the dark or bringing them into the full truth? I’m not so concerned for me. I don’t worry for my resolve. I have brought my desires and my boundless love into obedience to God for too long for it not to be sanctified. And I now know that that question, “If B____ is really what you want, are you willing to wait as long as it takes?” was indeed from God. He didn’t really give confirmation beyond the follow-up question, “Will God not move you away from this purpose if it is not from him? Has he not shown himself worthy of that trust?” The real confirmation came with time. It came as I realized that just as there was no one else for thirty years, there will never be anyone else. I was designed for one man alone. I was a freak for so long I got used to standing alone and it was a good thing – I had the resolve to wait for him as long as it takes. I don’t know if it’s how I was raised or how I was made, but I have never been able to settle for less than the best. I wait for the best, whether it comes or not. I know I was created this way as truly, as solidly, as I know God exists. This is how I was made. So no argument will stand against that. You can say it is foolish and incorrect, that B____ will never come back, that I am setting myself up for a lifetime of barren loneliness, that I am just afraid of moving on, that I’m crazy, you name it, I’ve either heard it or thought it. And I have no rebuttal. I am the worst lawyer in this case. I simply smile, shrug, and say, “That’s how I’m made.” And I have thirty years and a lot of dates behind me to back it up. There will never be anyone else. And if it’s just a matter of waiting, so be it.

And I have definitely faced the argument that every day that passes is one less day my eggs are viable. The science backs it up. The testimonies of those older women are all heartbreakingly true. But that’s 2 Corinthians 10:5 right there: I am in obedience to God in this. I have received confirmation after confirmation that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be in my life. So I refuse those “lofty thinking and arguments and pretensions and theories” and take every thought captive. I take them. God’s not the one who’s supposed to do that.

And hey, let’s face it, my God can do anything he wants. He made a virgin conceive – uh, what? That’s not physically possible. And he made an old, barren womb fertile. I have been obedient. And as surely as I know I was born for B____ M____, I know I was made to have children. Every day of my life has been building a legacy for them. They are the reason for all this.

So we’ll see what happens. We’ll see if my parents can be trusted with this unheard-of truth and if they can support me. And we’ll see what miracles God can work in their long-wearied faith. After all, my parents are “my people,” too, along with the M____ clan and Jessica and Bryan. And they are marked for freedom and fullness.

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

-- 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.”

-- Philippians 1:9

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his great purpose.”

-- Philippians 2:12-13

“For this reason, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and my please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you might have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.”

-- Colossians 1:9-12

What if . . . just what if . . . I’m not crazy, people? What if this really is going to happen and all these people I have claimed are actually going to see the fruition of all these verses? What if God really does still perform miracles?

What if?

Those are gloriously liberating, terrifyingly limitless words. Amen!

“We pray . . . that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by faith.”

-- 2 Thessalonians 1:11

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”

-- Hebrews 10:23

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

-- Hebrews 11:1

Code-Red - 6-8-10

2010-06-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

My parents have gone code-red on my non-existent dating situation. Asking me point-blank if I’m still secretly waiting for B____ to come back (thank heavens for verbal dexterity so I can throw them off the scent without lying), doing Match.com again for me, sending me profiles, and finally asking me tonight to see a professional again like I used to because one shouldn’t hate and dread dating as much as I do (the disadvantage of throwing them off the B____ scent was over-emphasizing the I-don’t-want-to-date scent).

Had this come up a year ago, which, well, it had, many times – I would have caved under the deluge of doubts fostered by others’ honest concern. I would have rolled over my own feelings and conceded the match because I had no way of having conviction in my own instincts.

Not now.

Believe me, doubts have come – honest soul-searching, brutal inspection of my own desires and my claims to love God above all else. But listening to my parents tonight, validating their concerns and unhesitatingly conceding that I have not one rebuttal to their arguments, merely quietly stating what I will and will not do, and not budging an inch: I believe this comes from this months-long “separation experience” with God. I no longer rely on them or their counsel quite so heavily. I love them no less, and I take their words into careful consideration as always, but even their concerns for my mental health – which at one time would have rocked me to my core – simply couldn’t uproot my conviction.

I feel in my deepest core, my farthest reach, my truest spirit, that I am doing what is right. Do I know how it will work out? Heck, no. Do I get really tired and lonely sometimes, knowing I can’t share this with anyone yet? You bet. But I know my God. He will make his way known to me. The closer I’ve drawn to God, the more of my life has burned away in my burgeoning desire for his presence, the surer I have become that what I knew all my life and tried to change the last few years is as true as my own name: I was made for one man and one man alone. It required thirty years of trying and failing to connect, of going on so many dates with so many different men, of feeling so persistently different that I thought I was truly defective, for me to stand on what I had already known from my childhood: it was never going to work with anyone but The One. Only one man was created, designed, just for me. And I could do all I’ve done and somehow continue to do for just one man. No other.

And knowing as my parents don’t believe I do what I risk losing, I say with calm certainty that if B____ never came back, I would remain alone. I cannot settle for a nice man so I can get a family and some conversation at the dinner table. Even for the irreplaceable gift of having a witness to the whole of my life – I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t made that way.

I’ve always felt different from other people because I am. I am not the rule. I am the exception. I know that from my head to my toes. That question was from God, and yes, I am willing to wait for B____ as long as it takes. Because there is no alternative. I have to be true to myself. So bring it on, you doubting Thomases, you stubbornly defiant circumstances. I am still more stubborn.

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

Though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

Though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful to God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength.

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to go on the heights.

-- Habakkuk 3:17-19

Facebook Faith - 6-7-10

2010-06-07T22:26:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine posted this quote on her Facebook and it floored me. In all the upsets and joys of the last month, this shined through the whispered doubts and unmovable stubbornness like a ray of sun:

“A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so a new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.”

- Eat, Pray, Love

This is what I have been doing for B____. All of these things. I have done them from my side of the world, from the other side of the vast ocean that flows between us. Through prayer and joy and desperation and sheer stubbornness and faith, I have accosted God again and again for the freedom and purpose of my beloved.

And as I write this, I suddenly see, as in a mirror, that the reverse has also been true. B____ did all this for me, too.

Can We Say, "Issues"? - April 3, 2005

2010-06-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

I found this old journal entry a few weeks ago. Wow. This is a full summation of the issues I struggled with for years. And some of those issues B____ cut through like tissue paper, and the rest God has healed completely. Amazing.
.

April 3, 2005

I have found it is worth nothing. All my efforts at purity, virginity, godliness, and all the rest of it. I have worked so long and so hard to build for myself a life I didn’t have to regret, a life I could look back on with my back straight and my head held high, only to find that that life is one I regret. I have more regrets than a lot of people have who didn’t work so hard to this end. All my regrets are missed opportunities, and those few regrets I have for things I actually did do aren’t so painful to think on as I had expected. The sting of them has faded so that now I don’t squint when I have to look at them, I don’t cringe. I can look at them now with calm equanimity, even humor. But the regrets for those missed opportunities, the endless list of them, has made me tired and unsatisfied, cynical and baffled. Never had it occurred to me that that would be the case, that the future I envisioned emerging from my choices should be twisted into reverse, into the negative of the pictures I so carefully shot.

And now, I find that those good, wise, moral choices I have made for so many years have left me nothing but alone. Life is not fair, and I’ve always known this, but I hadn’t expected it to bite me in this way, from this direction. I had always heard that the things you defend from, the unplanned disasters and incidental catastrophes that you build up your walls to keep out, never come from the well-defended northern direction you’ve been watching all these years, but ooze through the cracks in the crumbling southwestern wall that you thought you never needed to worry about. They slide through like dry rot and by the time you have become aware of it and have turned toward it, it’s wormed its way through all your walls until you’re huddling in the middle of your pathetic, besieged town. That’s what I’ve found of the careful walls I built according to all the rules of solid building I’d heeded all these years. Hearing and attending to advice and warnings was never my problem. Listening was my strength. Seeing the future was not.

When Lydia came back from California and mourned her choices to become sexually involved with her boyfriend, and warned me not to go her way, I listened. When I heard the never ending string of sermons aimed toward “young people” (inevitably centered on abstinence and sexual purity), I listened, never rolled my eyes because I had heard it a thousand times, even though I had. And even when I started to wonder if it was worth it to hold onto my virginity, and Monica said it wasn’t a waste, I listened. Not anymore. I now ask, “What is the point of saving so much? Who am I waiting for?” I think of doing romantic things with a man, and I always stop and think, “If he’s not the one, then that’s one more person who’ll be in my marriage bed,” and I freeze. And sometimes run. But look at Monica: she’s had more than a few boyfriends, and kissed and been in love with and done stuff with, and yet I have no doubt in my mind that she will be able to put on that white wedding dress and look her husband in the eyes and go without a qualm or wrinkle (like the Biblical analogy) to her marriage bed. And here I’ve abstained from so much, so that I could accomplish what Monica has been able to accomplish by simply doing what she wants and following her desires, which have been aligned with godly ideals by her upbringing and her faith, both of which I have, too. But whereas she was sanctified by her faith and upbringing and followed that sanctification in her actions, I was sanctified, and still worked like a dog. I must have been Catholic in another lifetime. And I can’t change what I’ve done, or rather not done, in my life. I can’t go back and tell myself to forget it and just follow my impulses and desires. I internalized all these years that that was bad, that that would lead you down a path to heartache and pain and loneliness and confusion. But look who’s got the heartache now. Look who’s lonely and confused now. Look who’s walking in the dark.

And you know, I feel that I’ve worked much harder, more consistently than a lot of people to please God. I don’t know that that’s such a good thing. While guys are thinking about sex an average of 280 times a day, I’m thinking about God that much. There’s something very wrong with that, and not what you’d think. I shouldn’t be working that hard and thinking that hard on the things of God, and have gone this long with such difficulty and questions and lack of satisfaction. Doing all that should have brought me some answers or at least some peace, but I can find neither. And then I see other Christians who, sure, do think about God and try to live according to his statutes and boundaries, but aren’t chained and suffocated and tangled by it; they follow their desires and, wonder of wonders, they have a few regrets but their lives aren’t always ruined by them. I was always afraid of that. But I am at the difficult place of disagreeing with that concern I always had, but unable (yet) to change. Oh, that’s fun.

The fact is that I have “saved” myself so completely, in so many ways (far more diligently than I needed, and I hate wasted effort), so that I would be able to have one brief, drizzling moment of my husband looking at me with pride and appreciation for the vast sacrifice I made for the length of my life. Yeah. Right. What is that one moment worth, even if it ever does come? Because let’s face it. For all the preacher talk, people just don’t hold virginity at such a high premium. There are so many gray areas between being totally virgin and being totally debauched. So many gray areas that it would take a year to fully describe them. Monica, for instance, is not as “virgin” as I am, technically, but she is just as pure. Now, how is that possible? I wonder. She has kissed guys and held hands and done whatever, and still been able to maintain that boundary and had that boundary respected without it being held against her. And she is happier and healthier than I am. I don’t hold this against her in any fiber of my being. I am not a jealous person, and I love her so much that I want her to be happy. I am happy that someone has found this marvelous balance. I am just not as happy that I haven’t found it myself. And all this sacrifice I’ve made, in the name of faith and future and fear, has left me dry and shriveled, without any instincts to call my own anymore. I never knew instincts have an expiration date. No one ever told me that.

And now I see that in order to “get” someone, in order not to be alone for the rest of my life, I must play those games I’ve seen all my life, that I say I know how to play, that I believe I know how to play, and yet feel so unnatural playing them. The flirting and coquetry. The sidelong, meaningful glances. The subtle arts of eroticism and appeal; the million slightly different levels of seduction; the this-and-that that makes up the whole of that indefinable and unbreakable attraction between the sexes. That same attraction I’ve been watching from the outside and never taking part in. I can’t be alone anymore, but the heat that drove me the past month has fizzled into the that old familiar depression and despair of hopeless loneliness. Because I can’t hide the fact that it just does not come naturally to me. Well, let me clarify. All those little things women do, those games, I can play, and play damn good. But my strict moral boundaries prevent me from being able to play them outside the marriage relationship, with someone who is not officially my husband. But God Almighty, how am I going to get into that relationship with anyone if I don’t play my tricks beforehand? It is a conundrum to which there is no other answer than for me to go out there, as unnatural as it may feel, and flirt and trick around and coax in for all I’m worth and just tune out the wildly loud voices of morality and integrity. I have never given myself enough credit. I know this. I never trust myself to do the right thing and operate within proper, godly boundaries unless I’ve got my hands clenched right on those fences—which necessarily means I’m on the fringe of the crowd, not anywhere close to the middle of the action. I know this. I don’t give myself enough credit. But I can’t seem to change myself.

I have far too many inhibitions, far too many thoughts that hem me in, before and behind. The only times I feel normal, like the way I would be if I wasn’t tormented by my heated, fevered brain’s workings and hypotheses and conclusions, is when I drink. When I’ve had a vodka or a martini or a glass of wine or an amaretto sour (or more than one), I can feel myself loosen up, smile more, and somehow, from somewhere, words come out of my mouth that sound NORMAL. Laughing and flirting and not worried about anything, and I think, God! if I could just hold onto this! If I could just find the remote control and keep my brain on mute. It’s only that I don’t think of it that I’m not an alcoholic by this point, because every social occasion, without exception, is exponentially easier with a couple of drinks in me. I’ll take the faint sheen of sweat through my make-up from the artificially created heat wave inside my skin from the fierily reacting alcohol—no problem, baby. It’s all good. No worries, hey, you want my number? Sure, hey, call me sometime? You want to go now? I want to skinny-dip in the river. Let’s go find a river. God! If I could just do that. See, my problem—and it really is a problem, when you think about it—is that I can be the most intoxicating blend of woman—sweet and sassy, wild and winsome, fiery and faithful, calm and crazy—if I can just lean into a relationship. But there is no way I can get to that warm, soft middle until I go through the land mines in the wasteland that rims it. And the only way to get through them is to be that way before I’m comfortable being that way. People will always give you the After-School Special line of “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.” Well, hell, if I listened to that with the same careful attention I have for 26 years, I’ll never do anything. I’ll never go anywhere. I’ll never be with anyone. I’ll never get to that point where I’m comfortable. So then I think (always thinking, dammit!) I should just always drink before hand so I can rack up enough encounters to make me comfortable, because when I drink, especially hard liquor, God, I love what it does to me, I AM with the general public the way I am with my close friends and family. And that’s what I’ve always been trying to show, but my damned inhibitions never cease to interfere with that neat, ambitious plan. But then I think, Is that how I want to make friends and lovers? Do I want to be that person who is only comfortable when she drinks? That’s dysfunctional, in desperate need of some serious therapy, pathetic, and a big, fat red flag for anyone who is entertaining any rosy thoughts of getting involved with me, which is the whole freaking POINT of all of this run-around! You see? This is what I’m talking about. It’s this godforsaken thinking that is ruining everything. I wouldn’t even need to drink if I could turn my brain off, or at least down. So I’m thinking this could be (a) another thinking jag that seems like it could be a revelation to liberate me and change my life but in actuality is just another smokescreen for a life that will never change but is desperate for it, or (b) the real thing; the real revelation that could liberate me and change a life that’s desperate for it. Three guesses as to which one I always hope it is. Three guesses as to which one it always is. God! I’m pathetic, holding on to something so ephemeral for that ridiculously brief, pale moment of my husband’s pride. And the thing is, the damnedest thing is, that a lot of people out there gave it away a long time ago and have all these regrets, and they don’t get that moment, but they work through it with their new spouse, and they resolve it, and get to the point where it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore, it’s not important anymore. You don’t HAVE to marry a megalomaniacal jerk who can’t deal with the idea that he’s not the first. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would bat an eye at your lack of virginity. They’d be pretty gosh-darned impressed that you hadn’t had sex with them until the wedding night. That’s more than enough virginity for most men, let’s face it. What just cracks my skull is that I’ve been sacrificing this much and working this hard and holding myself to such a high and holy standard for so long, as I’m supposed to have done—ha!—for such little reward. It just blows your mind! People talk about how wounding premarital sex can be in a marriage, but good Lord, it can’t be categorically insurmountable, or no one would do it because they’d know they’d never get through it! I agree, it can be serious, but I think all these years, I’ve built it up to be a Goliath when it wasn’t even a David. And the thought of that just makes me so bitterly disgusted. Disgusted that I didn’t just try hard enough, but I tried far too hard, and sacrificed far more than I needed to. I’ve always gotten very angry at waste, and this is flagrant waste. Arrogant, heedless waste to think I could have forever to make up for the losses. At this point, even if I started gouging life for all its pleasures and parties, I’ll never make up for it. I’ll never have my youth back. I’ll never have those painfully teenage moments of puppy love, then young love, then wrong love, then real love. I’ll never have my fresh, young instincts that are what gets you through the rig-a-marole of “does he like me, I don’t know, maybe I’ll tell him, maybe I won’t, ohmygodhe’scomingover!” I’ll never be young again. And I wasn’t even young the first time around. How bitter that can make you. I won’t listen anymore to those people who try to warn me with their regrets. They can’t possibly know the regrets I have, the regrets that come from missing opportunity after opportunity with a careless abandon that is almost obscene. And in fact, with irony that is just as obscene, the only regrets that have come about from my doing anything came from my uncontrolled fantasy life, which sprang from my frustrated desires and impulses that were caged by my inability to do anything. So not only do I have mounds of regrets from not doing things in my life and taking opportunities, but I have bitter regrets from what I did when I couldn’t do anything—because I couldn’t do anything in reality, I retreated into fantasy and sowed some of my bitterest regrets with that same unthinking flagrance. How messed-up is that?

So here I am, growing older, with a missing youth that no amount of milk carton pictures can bring back again, alone, always alone, and disgusted with myself and my pure choices. I value reputation and what people think well of me, but I have only been able to see in extremes, and I haven’t been able to do anything Miss Mary Sunshine wouldn’t do for fear of ruining my testimony. Well, take a good, long look at Monica Taylor, who is actually a more engaging Christian than me because of her variety. So why should I worry? Why not just give myself over to my own impulses? I’ve certainly spent enough time and effort and tears trying to align myself with God that I shouldn’t have much to worry about, right? I should be able to go on and trust that I will never even go up to the fences, let alone climb right over them. I don’t know why I should accuse myself with such indistinct insistence of being a hedonist, a bohemian hippie who has no sense of boundaries. A lifetime of my upbringing and my unflagging efforts to be what God calls me to be should be enough to convince me that it would actually be harder to go over those boundaries than it ever would have been to just rush into the action. And look how hard it is for me to rush in. That should be a comfort, but somehow, it’s just depressing. And to add salt to the wound, insult to injury, I feel that God has abandoned me, isn’t taking care for me in this. He is arranging everyone else’s life, the lives of all those people who give him moderate effort, but as for me, who is killing myself to follow every commandment not to be proud of myself but to please him, I see no hint of a fingerprint of his on these enormous issues in my life. I can’t remember the last time he did something in my heart, the last time I felt something, and I’m dying from the lack of feeling something. One reason why my need for a lover is stepped up to an almost unbearable degree—I need to feel something. I’ve lived too long of my life stroking down that desire so I can function. I can’t do that anymore, and I can’t feel anything for God, and I certainly don’t feel anything from him. We aren’t even roommates. He arranged some things when I first came back to him, and he arranged this life I have around me now—job, apartment, car, cat, life—but now he has gone off to dote on some other devotee, leaving me here in my hot, dry liturgy, with only deadened Scripture as a comfort. I thought maybe he was using that withdrawal of his to fire my motivation to get out there and find a man, but that fire burned itself out in my burn-out with my job. Now the burn-out with my job has eased, but the fire for a man has slumped into this all-too-familiar pattern of philosophical talk and dark, silent brooding, with no action in between.

My conclusion: what conclusion would actually come to fruition, in reality? What conclusion should I bother with when I don’t really believe any would become reality? But my spirit calls out with the desperate thirst of a man in the desert for some conclusion, some end in sight to this misery and turmoil, even if it only burns me as it sizzles into insubstantial steam in the sun. So I have only to say that I need to start devouring life, start living as if I really was drunk, and not worry about how I sound or how my testimony is affected. I need to flirt and play games and pull tricks with men to cull them from where they cluster together. I need to harden even as I show them my softness. I need not to be afraid, as I always have been, of my power as a woman, of my ability to bewitch a man. I’ve done it. I can easily do it. It’s not the lack of that that has fostered my hopelessness that I’ll ever get a man. It’s my inability to do that before I’m in a relationship. But that’s so messed up, there isn’t even a term strong enough to express it. I need to open my eyes and watch and keep watching as I send out signals like a bitch in heat and see a man respond and start toward me and stand my ground until he reaches me and not run and give him a piece of myself, even something as tiny as a phone number, and not run and go on a date with him and talk with him on the phone and flirt by saying totally unoriginal things that a million other women have said throughout history but will be seen as enchanting because this man is under my spell and not run and brush his arm and peek through my long eyelashes and let a smile curve on my glossed, pouty lips as I am fully aware of the power and tired unoriginality of each gesture and not run and let him kiss me and kiss him back and not run and not want to run and see his little idiosyncrasies and breathe in and out and accept them and not run as I’ve always run when I’ve seen those and know that I am just like every other women, and that’s okay, despite my heated desire to stand out, because I’d rather be like every other women and not be alone, than be a true original with no one around to appreciate it.

Right . . .

I’ll put that on my list right after finding a cure for cancer.

How Is That Possible? - 5-8-10

2010-05-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

On my way to D.C. to join my parents for a three-day weekend, something struck me that I think had not struck me in such brilliant clarity before. I was thinking about B____’s ex-fiancée and I realized as I hadn’t before that she had him and let him go. And I was boggled, momentarily blinded to the highway signs flitting past. She had met him, liked him, then loved him; she had become integrated with his family, slept with him, lived with him, and was asked to marry him. She was building a life with this glorious, flawed human being and just couldn’t make it work, couldn’t want it as much as I’m sure she wanted to want it.

I never got the impression she was a bitch. Rather, they just came to the realization with reluctant inevitability that they just weren’t right for each other.

And I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. She let him go? She had him square in her embrace and – what? – let him slip? Now, I am not exonerating B____ from responsibility in this. He has deep wounds that would have reared their ugly heads and interfered with any relationship he tried to have until he got them healed. And in the end, he wasn’t exactly clinging to her. But I can’t help but wonder – did she never look at him and see him with unscaled eyes, see his worth shining right out of his skin? Did it never occur to her to hold on and not let go, to see his flaws come out for the hundredth time, the thousandth time, and choose – make the choice, not float on the feeling – to focus her narrowed sights instead on his marvelous wealth of good qualities? Did she never think how worthy it would have been to believe instead in his potential, to view with level-headed simplicity all he could be, even if he wasn’t showing it right at that moment? How far could her stubbornness or vision have reached to have had him square in her life and let the tide ebb and slowly wash him out to sea?

I cannot wrap my brain around it. He is a dazzling display of the best qualities that were instantly obvious to me from our first meeting, before I had ever fallen in love with him. And to have had such a man as is not found in this world look at you and say he wants to spend the whole of his life with you alone, only to come to the unimaginable conclusion that it’s not enough for you . . . it defies my comprehension.

She had him. She was loved by him. And she let him go. Not as I did, because he left, but because she didn’t want him anymore. I am at a loss for words.

But I suppose this is what I meant all those months ago when I was first facing the prospect of life without him and recognizing my own incurable helplessness before my love for him: the fact that he cannot warrant the worth I saw in him, his very words echoing his self-blindness – “No one has ever looked at me the way you look at me.” – simply proves, quietly and without fanfare, that I was the only one made for him. I was the only one given B____-sight which can see with unflinching clarity his shortcomings and still see the stronger light of his incomparable worth.

I can’t hold it against her, his ex-fiancée, for not seeing his great value, for not seeing what a gem she had in a sea of cut glass.

She couldn’t.

She wasn’t me.

The Truth - 5-4-10

2010-05-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

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I love him.
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It's Going To Be A While - 5-2-10

2010-05-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

You know, I may have doubted that that longed-for question, “If B____ is really what you want, are you willing to wait as long as it takes for him?” was from God, but I always knew that if it was from him, he would not have asked a question like that unless he meant to put it to the test, unless “as long as it takes” would surpass my own feelings and take me into the depth of the realm of doubt. Unless it was going to truly test me. I knew that if he asked me that question, what he was really saying was, “Get ready. It’s going to be a while.”

And I said at the time, without a shadow of a doubt, that, yes, absolutely, positively, no going back, yes, I am willing to wait. And through all the trials that have crashed down on me since that night, I hold to that. I don’t want anyone else not because I’m afraid of dating or am just holding on out of habit, but because I know B____’s worth. I know how he fits me. I know there is none like him. I know no other woman could ever love him as I do. Not because another would be less capable of loving him as much if she truly saw and understood him – he is just too lovable and charmingly self-deprecating not to be loved massively. Rather, it would be because no other woman can see him like I can. No one else has the lenses required to understand him. And I must fight for him, even when he grows cold and stiff beneath my fingers, because he must not be left unprotected. He must not be left to eke out a life where he shies away from the risk necessary to grasp all he dreams of and deserves. If I don’t cover him and lift him up, no one would. It’s a shocking thing, really, that such a man is allowed to drift in the company of so many and not be seen for all he is. He said it himself that fateful night when I told him I loved him – “No one has ever looked at me the way you do. To everyone else, I’m just an ordinary guy.” Shocking. They just don’t see. But I do.

Am I Beautiful At All? - 5-2-10

2010-05-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

I asked my father today, knowing what I was doing and feeling no compunction, if he thought I was beautiful. Knowing how often he complimented me on a very regular basis, he scoffed tolerantly and said, “You know the answer to that question. You’re just fishing for compliments.” I said, “Yes, I am, because I need to hear it.” I could hear the smile in his voice as he said of course I was beautiful. I asked him what was beautiful about me and he rattled off with alacrity my skin, my hair, my eyes, my figure, my hands, my feet, my smile, my teeth. I was starting to glow when what I risked happened, as I knew it would. He paused in his list and in a sterner voice added, “You should be out finding a man who can appreciate all the beautiful things about you. What are you expecting to happen? How is this going to end?” I shrugged him off as I must and we fell back to TV watching. How could I tell him I’m a bit tied up? That I don’t want anyone else because there is no one else like B____? That I’m not a fool but I have to wear the scarlet letter of it anyway?

I let it go. What else could I do? The fact of the matter is that if you’re not actively searching for a man, you are not allowed to participate in the grown-ups’ conversations about relationships, weddings, and raising children. Your opinions don’t belong. When I was dating B____, I experienced what it was like to have the flood-gates open and having admittance to the world everyone else inhabited, the world of connections, the world I had always pressed my nose against the glass to see. My right to talk about my dreams and plans for a wedding and marriage and babies was no longer amputated by the inevitable censure, “Why don’t you get a date first?” That had been the response I received when I wanted to eagerly share opinions I had, no exceptions. That was one extremely lovely, rather unexpected perk of my relationship with B____ – I was a first-class citizen now.

How could I tell my father I am working, I am searching, I’m not giving up? How could he understand that right now I don’t have anybody but my father to tell me I’m beautiful and have it mean something?

When you’re alone, you lose those rights in that world of connections. You have only one right – the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and probably will be used against you in a court of community.

So for now I’ll just have to trust God finds me beautiful and try to see it for myself and make that be enough and just not ask anymore.

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But I do have a beauty to unveil and I am not to be wasted. I am meant to be seen.

I Think I Felt an Earthquake... - 4-29-10

2010-04-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

Every day on the way to work, I approach on the bridge the tree-lined shore of Hampton. B____’s family home is somewhere on that shore, looking out at the water. He took me there once to show me where he grew up. And some days I have to look away.

Why does anyone do it? Leash their lives to someone else’s? Why do we invite that kind of stress, the constant negotiations and terribly fragile vulnerability? What house can contain all the baggage two people can collect?

Surely we can think of a more efficient way to propagate the human race, especially with today’s technology. A cleaner, safer, quieter way to procreate so we can stay alone. Because isn’t that so much easier? To keep yourself away; the essential you, fenced? No wars, no hurts, no unthinking cruelty, the bash of a limb that wouldn’t have hurt anything had it just not been so cramped and crowded. So why is it not good for man to be alone?

For that matter, let’s go to the source. Why, God, do you want to be with us? Why, when you’re complete in your own glory, do you insist on opening yourself up to such untrustworthy houseguests? Why do you embrace the unwieldy things we are, all the rejection and unending boundary-pushing? What could you possibly get out of it that would make up for the God-awful messes we consistently churn out like a Ford factory?

It just seems like everyone is in pain and everyone is drowning. Everybody hurts everybody and where, really, does it end? When friends betray friends and sons assault fathers and lovers leave and children hurt and parents are left and mothers sleep alone – how does the weight of it not crack the earth?

We can’t seem to keep our hands off. And what hope is there? Why do we bother? And why do you?