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...

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.

Forever and almost always

Once in a while, I encounter a song that puts some kind of invisible-but-very-real bind around my chest.  Take, for example, these lyrics penned by Kate Voegele herself (who, I must say, has a beautifully smooth voice in addition to an attentive songwriting-mind.  Well done, Pandora):

I'll be fine; just love me when you can

And I'll wait patiently

I'll wake up every day just hoping that you still care

S says that "[I] have better things to wake up for."  Not right now, I don't.  Right now, this is all I want.  Ugh...that's stubborn of me.  Even the words, as they appear on my screen, look like belligerence.  Here's the thing, though: after a full day of vacillating between fragility and refusing to break, I'm ending the day feeling...steely.  (It makes sense, especially physiologically, that I'd need a break from all of the crying, although it may not be the healthiest choice to run to the other extreme and decide to try to not feel anything.)  But I'm tired of battling this expectation (whether it's from others or just from myself) to be happy and fun and bubbly and social and light all the time.  God meets me where I am.  He is, as I learned in church this morning, compassionate...and compassionate for me.  Yes, He meets me where I am, and where I am is none of those things...not today.  And I need to let that be okay.

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.

Internal processing

I'm an internal processor, which means that I'm hardly ever as articulate in conversation as I am in writing.  I can put on my professional, talking-to-adults hat and read like I'm thirty, but when it comes to the conversations that bring out five-year-old me, I actually have to prepare.  I need to think about what I'm going to say and anticipate potential reactions.  Is this a weakness?  Is it dishonest?  I used to think so, but these days, I've been growing into an acceptance of this being the way I operate.  The people who really matter in my life accept it, so why shouldn't I?


Ps. 56 is on my mind today, particularly v. 3: "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you".  I've been saying this to myself all day long...trying to internalize it, hold it, believe it.  I woke with puffy eyes and a throbbing head that reminded me of how last night racked me, wrecked me...and a few random passersby, including the kindly woman at the campus center near the coffee, have told me that I look "really tired" today.  (I wish I knew her name - names are so important.)  You bet I'm tired...but it's not your fault that you've only gotten part of the answer right.  There are only a few people, after all, who can recognize this look as the she-cried-all-night look.  The important people know...and one of those important people is gone, gone, gone.  So, no, I don't want to be cheery with the other two students in my lab, or play with fruit flies, or move, or talk to anyone except those important people.  What I want to do is sleep off this headache in the arms of the people who matter.  I should be running to God, because when I am afraid, I ought to put my trust in Him.  I wonder how long it will be before I'm brave enough to be honest with Him and pray.

Oddly enough, I'm learning something in this: that trusting Him might involve being patient with more than just my circumstances.  It seems to involve being patient with myself, too.

What I want in a husband

This is not a matrimonial profile in any sense of the term; it is simply a record of...what I want.

• He should be willing to to walk with me on whatever journeys I choose to take.  Brownie points if he initiates new journeys, or if he gives me the courage to begin the journeys that I've always been too fearful to begin.
• He should love and respect my family.  And where/when he falls short (because I am a realist and I know that it will happen), he should want to work to create those bonds or repair the damage.
• He should have the honesty and humility of a child.  This means simultaneously being sensitive to my needs (holding my hand and offering a shoulder when necessary) and being driven to help me grow through him (doling out constructive criticism and offering tough love when necessary).  And just as I will be open to suggestion and growth through him, he should be open to suggestion and growth through me.
• He should love me.  Future Husband, this is the requirement on which all of the others rest.  If you love me, everything else will naturally follow.  As the creator of this list, I promise you that.  But you should be aware that loving me doesn't just mean romance, although that is definitely a crucial part of the deal.  It means that you see the same me, whether I'm wearing my wedding dress or my nightgown.  It means that you want me, whether it feels like the most natural thing in the world or like everything is tumbling down around us.  It means that the thought of hurting me will hurt you...so you will not be able to dream of hurting me.  On the contrary, just to reiterate: you will love me.

P.S. I did not include the obvious qualities that any girl with half a mind for practical foresight would include (financial stability, wanting children, being musical, faithfulness, virginity, and wanting to watch "Grey's Anatomy" with me) because this post is more about emotional requirements.  But Future Husband, know this: those practical requirements are just that - requirements.  They are not optional.  Especially the last one.