almost funny

I used to watch Mr. Roger's Neighborhood  on TV as a kid.  My favorite part of the show was when they zoomed into a painting of a stoplight and then zoomed out into a 2 minute bit on how things are made.  It showed the behind the scenes of certain jobs, like a crayon factory, and blew open the doors to a dimension of the world I had never considered: that crayons had to be made, and that someone made them, and that there was a process to that.  

I feel like I am watching one of those bits again.  A portal opening to a world I was unaware of.  Instead of crayons, I am watching what it's like when your brother is murdered by gunshot.  

-The matter-of-factness of it: googling "how to get over a loved one's murder"

-The sick humor in it: my stepdad texting me a picture of my mom and a backpack from the airport: "mom and josh say hi".  Josh's remains are in an urn in the backpack.

-what a dead body looks like when it's someone you love, when it's someone that died young

I am desperate for meaning.  For some good work to do with my hands, with my brain.

In my desperation, I am ignoring the work in front of me, the job I have now.

Logically and slightly emotionally, there are two paths that I can see.

But neither path is lit ahead of me.

Lord your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.


If all this world is to fade, what is the point of saving it?  Of caring for it?  Why do I desire to do so, perhaps even more than the souls that you have given us?

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. --Isaiah 40:8

Why do I cry in Jurassic World when the Brontosaurus is dying but not when the humans are?  What is wrong with my heart?  Why am I so closed to the pain of other humans?  Why do I protect my heart so fiercely?

We are talking about kids.  I don't want to have kids out of giving up.  But if kids are the right path, then that's different.  

God light our paths,. please.

I am burying talents so hard.  And yet all I want is your approval.  Do we just move and ask forgiveness later?  I don't know where to find the balance of waiting and moving.  And I don't know which way is forward.

I still believe you're true.  That your promises, even the ones I don't know, are true and forever.  I believe that your son, Jesus, is real and will intercede for me.  I believe in santification and salvation.

I just want to know if what I'm doing is ok or not and where to go.  What is the point of a relationship with God if you can't hear him?  

If I am spiritually deaf God, heal me?  If not, show me, sign language something please.  Interpretive dance your message?  Do something you know I'll understand?

Is that all I am?  A mother?  Is it that the small things are really the biggest?  Is that the lie I've been following all along, that I have it inverted--where regonitioon and pay are more important that love and relationships? 

WHY AM I SO SET ON DOING SOMETHING 
ON BEING SOMETHING
AND WHY WON'T YOU LET ME???

i feel like you gave me all this fracking talent and then
no where to go
and just said no?

like a mute with a beautiful voice

are you doing something?

I need to feel that peace, that closeness, I need to feel you here, please.

If you made me an INFJ why the frak would you not let me do something
it just seems so cruel?  I get that it's not up to me.   

Where is the line of my part vs your part.  Why is that so hard for me?  

alone

We've been married almost four years now.  It went by quickly.  What I wanted to write here, before I forget, is the pearl of wisdom that just came to me whilst looking at a wedding picture just now of us raising champagne glasses:

I laughed just then, because I realize how wrong I was from the start.  I was so afraid of marriage, because it would strip me of my being alone.  I realize that most people, or at least, many people, get married to leave their loneliness--to always be together.  But I am not most people.

I was afraid of having to sacrifice the core, quiet, completely whole and compact self that I am.  The part that doesn't need or want anyone, anything.  The isolation I adored seemed selfish.

But I was so wrong.  For nearly four years now, I have been mourning the loss of self and trying to melt into something indistinguishable, wrongly equating formlessness with selflessness and service.

We (husband and I) have been in pain because of my incorrect conclusion and where acting upon this conclusion has taken us.

More than anything, Noa wants me to live fully, because he loves me.  He longs for, prays for, me to "be happy."  What he really means, though, is to be something, to do something, to become all of me that I can be.  To take a form, to define the lines boldly.  To be.

Ever since we got serious (thought we might get married), I have worried about losing him in the distance as I sprint towards where my inner compass points as true north. We did talk about it once, in the car, parked at a gas station across the street from the ice skating rink (another story for later). We sat there for an hour, going back and forth about hypotheticals.

'What if I want to move to a foreign country?'
'What if I want to be a missionary?'
'What if I want to start a business, or a non-profit?'
'What if I want to go save the world, and it takes all of me?'

In that car, he told me the truth.  I wasn't ready for it.  It didn't seem fair, but I knew that didn't matter.

'If you want to go to a foreign country, or save the world, you have to lead it--it's just not my thing.  But I will go with you anywhere and support you with anything.  I will be your co-pilot,' he said.

'How can I be the pilot? Shouldn't you be the pilot?  I kind of want you to be the pilot as the man.'

And we did get married, so I have tried to die inside.  To wait for a miraculous stirring in his heart to dream big and shake up the world.  Something is budding--God is doing great things and is changing his heart to want to serve.  But leadership is a few years out.

I don't have to wait to be me for him to be him.  Doesn't that make sense?  To think that somehow God needed my sacrifice, like penitence for his heart to grow? Where the heck did I ever think that my sacrifice was good enough for anything?  It is only by Christ that anything is done: 'Apart from me you cannot do anything'--'I am the vine, you are the branches...he who remains in me will bear great fruit...'

So I need to be attached to the vine.  I need to live fully, abundantly.  For all of us.  Fruitless me is hurtful to me, God, the world, and the man I love.