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.

Living the professional life

R turned eight today.  When did that happen?  It seems like yesterday that he was lying on his back in the bassinet, and my mum had to shoo me away so he could sleep.  I used to push the little light-blocking fan away from the top and surprise him by appearing upside-down...that giggle was infectious.  Pure beauty, like bells when the storm has calmed and all is still.  I miss that.  I love him more every day, but I miss those early days so much...the days when he so blatantly depended on me.  I miss feeling him go limp in my arms, or on my shoulder, as he dropped off to sleep.  I miss that baby smell.  Why does he have to grow up?  Oh, Father, help me to love him right now, to love him more, to love him exactly as You love him.  Memory has a way of paralyzing even the most earnest of lovers, even the most well-meaning of big sisters.

Oh, I have to move on...I could write all day about him, but I must move on.  Most of my thoughts from today are in the journal entry, but I can say one more things that I didn't include there: after the rigor and stamina-draining awfulness of sitting through straight lectures all morning and afternoon, it was a great relief to go upstairs (to a room with windows, no less!) and be addressed by Profs. P and B like the young adults, the students we really are - not the adult professionals we must deign to be when we are among the older graduate students.  It was so, so relieving to hear even offers of help with the presentations, with the journal assignments...to be asked such an elementary question as, "Are you guys struggling with anything?"  (I mean, I don't know about the other LIM students, but that's how it felt for me.  Despite my obsession with doing all things adult, I do, in a lot of respects, want to be a child forever.)

Prayer is personal.

The discipline of writing calms me.  Idle time usually spooks me, but I think this self-imposed requirement (that I write every day) is creating a safe space for me to slow down.

I've been thinking a little more about why I've gone back to writing like this after about a year of inactivity.  The issue before was that I didn't have a clear-cut purpose for the blog, and so my motivation flagged because I didn't know why I was writing.  But it's clear to me that I'm not writing for an audience.  I'm not trying to promote a product, or a service, or even myself.  I think, rather, that this is turning into a journal of sorts...the kind of writing I always reserved strictly for my notebooks, to be created by hand and pen and scribbles here and there.  But typing is faster.  Perhaps that's lazy, but I'm okay with it.  Who knows - maybe I'll go back to more traditional journaling at some point, but for now, this is what is helping me.  It helps, especially given that I'm an internal processor...and I'm content to let this logic dictate things for now.

The logical follow-up question to this thought is, why don't you make the blog private, then, or just keep a journal on Word and save it to your computer?  Well, I guess I could take either of those routes, but here's the thing: I sometimes get into these moods where I'll hop from blog to blog, hitting the link at the top of my screen just for kicks.  And occasionally, I come across a blog that teaches me something new, or catches my mind, or plants a seed, or just plain interests me.  There's nothing (so far, at least) I've written on this blog that's too private for another person to read, whether he/she knows me or not.  And maybe someone out there, someday, will come across something I've written or thought and be spurred to think a little harder.  Maybe something in me will help him/her, or prompt conversation.  I'm aware that as a person, I'm "no passive observer of life" (as my best friend so encouragingly put it, a few months ago).  I have lots to give, and a willingness to do so...so in the spirit of maybe creating something beyond myself, I'm keeping myself wide open.

A shift: I've been thinking lately about how intimidating prayer can be, and how such fear is actually counterintuitive to the idea of praying.

Yesterday, in a weak moment, I tried to pray - honestly, not because I thought it might help, but because I was desperate and already a weepy mess.  Over the last few months, I've fallen into a comfortable pattern of starting prayers, "Father," or "Lord," but yesterday, was in a precarious place of being physically alone and just wanting a person to be there with me.  I wanted so badly to be leaning into someone who cares about me and understands the bitterness of being curled up in bed and hugging your pillow so you can try to pretend you're not alone.  I wanted something personal, in other words, and at that moment, "Father" and "Lord", though intimate titles, felt like distance.

A name, on the other hand, is a far more personal way to approach a person...and God, as it turns out.

So I tried to begin a prayer, and it took me only a moment to realize that I couldn't say, "Jesus."  It felt paralyzing, to be that personal, even with the God who has searched me and knows me and all that jazz.  And it wasn't like I had reason to be self-conscious, either; I was alone.  I persisted for a few minutes, and when I finally was able to say it, it only made me cry harder.  I'm not sure why, though.  Perhaps it had something to do with hearing myself trying to eke out something even vaguely resembling prayer.

That was last night.  The post-crying headache has stuck around all day and is still squeezing the back of my head, so I think I need to stop writing now and prep for tomorrow's Bioethics seminar.  Between that, my head, and my needing to be out of my room by 7 am tomorrow, I wonder if I'll be able to catch any shut-eye tonight...