A trusting heart

Intense grief is borne of intense love.  And I’m supposed to be trying to move forward, but I’ve loved too intensely to feel like I can make any such progress on my own.  Hell, I don’t want to move forward.  Thank goodness for friends who plant seeds like “you need to move on” – I wonder, often, if that’s God.

Jesus asked so often: “What do you want Me to do for you?”  He wants to know what I want…and this is a small comfort.  He cares about what I want – even, perhaps, if it is different from what I need.  He cares.  And maybe, just maybe, this is an avenue to trusting Him.  As much as I long for this friendship back, for everything to go back to the way it was, I long perhaps more for a trusting heart.  So I go to bed tonight with Ps 37^4-5 on my mind: “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and He will do it.”

Dreaming

Hum hain is pal yahaan, jaane ho kal kahan
We're here, in this moment...don't know where we'll be tomorrow
Hum miley naa miley, hum rahein na rahein
We may meet, we may not...we may be here, we may not
Rahegi sadaa yahaan, pyaar ki yeh dastaan
Our love story will stay here forever
Sunenge sadaa jise, yeh zameen asmaan
And the earth and the sky will listen

Feeling nostalgic, romantic, like a slow-burning candle in a quiet room...

The song says it all.  I may be idealizing him, I know.  I think I'm idealizing the notion of being in love.  No, it's more about friendship, this incredible friendship that is better than anything I ever knew...and now, it's gone.  That feels like punishment, no matter how much D says she's aiming for "restoration and healing".  I'm not restored...I'm torn.  And I'm not healed...I'm hurt.

I realized yesterday that I don't want to leave for Ireland because it will take me further from him.

Jaane ho kal kahan...

So the Olympics are on...

...and I'm thinking about everything but the Olympics.  I'm thinking about how:

• I'm afraid to pray, but am trying to remember that my sin is not news to Him, so I shouldn't be afraid.  After all, He did command me not to fear my storms.
• Mum, realizing that I'm actually done with research on Friday, asked if I wanted her to come up earlier than Sunday...and I, not wanting to miss church, said, "No, Sunday's just fine."
• I'm tired of people and tired of crying and tired of myself and tired of missing the one friendship I can't have right now.
• home is going to be more of the same.

Do I have to?  Father, I need to stop being afraid of You.  Come near, please, and help me to pray.  I want You back.

Running

I'm in full flight...I have been, for a few days now.  Hiding, turtling, and then feeling alone - I wonder when that will make more sense to me.  For now, it just seems like the usual paradox.

I read this morning that "oftentimes when love hurts, we shut down and stop feeling.  We blame and get angry.  And in those times, we often miss the one thing that we ought to be doing.  Trusting in God that He will provide for our every need, knowing that He is in control of our lives even when our lives seem so very out of control.  Our issues do not shock him...it is okay to be angry.  It is okay to hurt.  It is even okay to be angry with God.  What is not okay is to sit in that anger; to remain in that place...when love hurts, where do you run to?  Where do you hide...is it in the promises of the One who created you and knows your every hurt, even when you aren't speaking to Him?  When love hurts, to whom do you run?"

Well, that pretty much sums it up.  I haven't been speaking to Him because prayer, at its core, is honesty about Him and me, with Him and me.  I don't feel ready to be honest, because this kind of honesty is something I imagine to be a Pandora's box of sorts - open one issue, and the whole lot come tumbling out.  Perhaps it will be better for me in the end, but right now...well, it's only been a month.  It's okay to grieve a loss (although I mustn't stay in this place forever, like D keeps saying.  I must not...yet it feels impossible to move.)

Father, I'm sorry.  You scare me.  Approaching You scares me.  Give me this day my daily bread...in time, I'll try harder to come back.  In the meantime, I count three people who I can talk to - thank You for these three.

Bearing all things

I've had nothing to say for the past few days...not to myself, not to anyone else, not to God, not to anyone.

It's been a month.  One long month.  I have a little more than a week left on campus, and exactly a month left in New York.  My eyelids are heavy...dim with tears and emotional exhaustion...so I'm trying to remember, as the hymn says, that there is "grace that is greater than all [my] sin".

Grace, grace, God's grace
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within
Grace, grace, God's grace
Grace that is greater than all our sin


I know that if I ask for Your pardon, You will give it, and give it freely...for that, I'm grateful.  I wish it meant something more than just a Biblical truth, though.  D says that even after you've asked for and received forgiveness, you may still have to live with the consequences of your actions.  That's pretty much where I am...I need Your forgiveness to mean something in my heart, in my bones.  Help me, please...show me that You're more than words, more than verses and ink on page after page.  You have to be more than that, right?  Father God, I read and hear and understand (sometimes) that love bears all things...and I would concede these things, give you my yoke and take your burden (or whatever the verse says), if I trusted that You have my best interests at heart.  I confess that I don't trust You like I should...I don't love You like I should.  My greatest love is reserved for people, and that's wrong...so I need You to help me change that, because loving people - loving a person, caring through pain and awful ache - is hurting my heart.  And that's not how friendship is supposed to work.  It's not supposed to hurt like this.

Free falling

You know what it is?  I fell in love.  That's all it is.  Now I understand why they say it's like falling...

because I didn't realize it,
but I'd suddenly slipped into friendship...
friendship that was the best I've ever had...

because I didn't realize it again,
but I'd suddenly slipped into love...
love that nudged me closer to joy and forgiveness and transformation every day.

I'm free falling.  Every day.  Oh, this ache...my head feels ready to split.  I miss this friendship, and I want nothing more and nothing less than to get all of that back.  He told me, "God is bigger," but I don't believe God cares right now.

In her blog, Emily P. Freeman writes about why it's important to know what makes you cry:

"So what?"  Why does it matter what makes you cry or tear up?  Maybe it just means you're overly emotional, sappy, too sensitive.  Maybe.  Or maybe our tears are tiny messengers, secret keepers of the most vulnerable kind, sent to deliver a most important message: Here is where your heart beats strong.  Here is a hint to your design.  Here is a gift from your inner life, sent to remind you about those things that make you come alive."

So the violence of these tears, the depth of this awful alone-ness and the place it lands me, I suppose, all reveal how viscerally I care, and how fiercely I love...and how that care, that love...it makes me come alive.

Captive

I should be working right now...

Instead, this disease holds me captive.  And my heart has never ached like this before.  I need to vent, and I'll do it here because I'm pretty sure no one's reading...which is just fine with me.  Plus, there's no one I can talk to about any of this except D and S and I'm terribly afraid of overburdening them.  What if I'm too much and they decide I'm not worth dealing with anymore?

It's hard to imagine that I could be happy - really, deeply happy - anytime before January.  And I don't even know what's going to happen in January...how that transition will happen.  I know that this time is supposed to provide healing, but it feels like punishment and I'm broken and alone and it hurts to breathe.  So I cry and let this disease control me.  I focus on the cramps because that's pain I can control.  On June 24th (which is when this new hell began), S called it an addiction.  I've only ever thought of it as a coping mechanism, or a control issue...but in a way, her redefinition made sense.  I don't feel able to live any other way.  Is that addiction?

I almost wish I could be angry with him, so that I wouldn't have to be sad...but I care too much about him to even consider such a thing.  Instead, I walk around campus and remember and remember and remember some more.  Everywhere I walk, a memory lies in wait to knock the breath out of me all over again.  B has her reminder in me, and I have my reminders all over this home away from home.  I guess that's fair (what a bitter thought)...but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

Two days ago, S called to see how I was doing.  Among some other well-intentioned and gentler things, she told me that this particular friendship is just not going to come back, and that it would be better (for me) to just acknowledge the truth in that.  She's not wrong; I understand her in my head (as opposed to understanding it in my heart).  It was just way more direct than I could handle.  She apologized, too, and I said, "It's fine; don't worry about it," out of politeness.  She's only known me for four months, after all.  How can I ask her not to be direct when that's the kind of person she is, and she's only known me for four months, and she's only trying to help?

But I ended up crying, alone, all night...it was the same as usual.  It was acrid and breathless and desperate.  It made me physically sick.  I woke with puffy eyes and a tightness over my temples, yet had to spend the day working in my lab and being cheery.  All I really wanted to do was go back to my room and turtle so I could sleep off the headache.  Pretending to be happy is exhausting.  Deceiving (most of) my friends makes me feel more alone than I should have to feel.  There are very few people that I want to be around right now, but if any one of them were, I might have some motivation to move.