seasons ...

I am in a strange season right now. Much like the physical season we're in, this is a season of waiting, of shedding some proverbial leaves until I feel bare and ugly, of being quiet and looking inward. It also seems to be a lonely season for me and one with equal parts beauty and brokenness.

I can sense that I'm getting to the point at which the one thing I have so desperately held on to, the thing I have refused to let go of and let God handle, is not really mine to control. And it never really was. I have clung to it knowing that I could do a much better job with it than he could. The truth is, since I'm being completely candid here, I haven't done a better job with it, far from it. But it just hurts too much to give it up and trust someone else with it, especially someone I can't touch or physically see. I know, though, that the only thing left for me to do is to do just that. I don't know how to do it and the thought of it scares me. I don't know what it will look like but I'm also a little excited and can already feel some sense of relief and freedom in it.

What it comes down to is this (and I know this won't come as a shock to most of you as I've posted about it before in maybe not so many words): I have such an ache inside to be part of a marriage, to be a witness to someone else's life, and for someone to be a witness to mine, to share together all that it has to offer - the joys and heartaches, the mountaintops and valleys - and truly be together in every sense of the word. I want someone to fight with and make up with, someone who is willing to call out the areas of my life that need some light shed on them and then challenge me to grow in those areas, someone I can grow old with but still be young and childish with at the same time. I want to be able to reach out for someone's hand and know that someone will take it, someone who is more excited when I come home at night than my beloved boxer Sophie. I want in-laws to argue with. I want someone who will pray for me and cherish me. Someone who will CHOOSE me. God should be his first priority but I want to work toward being someone's second. This year I've had several attempts at finding that someone and so far all of them have failed. One of them is someone I work with and I, consequently, get the joy of seeing that person on a daily basis.

This has become such a huge part of my life lately it seems. I've had several friends / acquaintances in the last few weeks tell me they are engaged or having a baby. I am, no doubt, thrilled for them and would never ever wish them anything but happiness in their new chapters. But bubbling there just barely under the surface is this ugly part of me that aches and yearns for the day when I will call a friend and say, "Guess what? I'm getting married!" and have her scream her head off with excitement the way I do when I get a phone call like that.

But there's a dilemma even in that. Over the weekend I was doing lots of thinking. It came to the point where I was I actually trying to think of who I would call if I really truly needed someone (if my father died, or something equally tragic). And I honestly didn't have an answer. I don't know who that would be. It is true that I have siblings, 2 sisters, but don't really feel that I have that type of relationship with either of them, especially with one of them. The thought of not having someone to call hurts in parts of me that I hadn't been aware even existed. It wasn't always like that and perhaps that's why it hurts so much now. My best friend of 15 years and I recently had somewhat of a falling out that has left me deeply hurt, wounded and vacant. Over the last few years I have increasingly felt that our friendship was coming to an end and that it was actually somewhat of an abusive relationship on her part: self-seeking, self-serving, manipulative, and draining for me. This last encounter / disagreement with her really forced me to evaluate that friendship and, while I do forgive her, decide that I can no longer be her friend.

I do have several more "surface level" friends that I would like to go deeper with and I am in the process of evaluating those more too and deciding which ones I'd like to invest more in and take to a deeper level and which I can afford to let slide. I do have a few that are "deeper" but only see / talk to them sporadically and would like to find a way to change that if possible. I'm frustrated sometimes because I so often hear, "We need to have lunch. I can't wait to see you," and then when I ask "When?" I never hear from them again until the next time they say, "Hey, we should do lunch. There's so much to tell you." I'm tired of being the one that puts in ALL the effort. I realize that friendships require effort and some will be more give and less take at different times than others but I really don't feel it should be more give and less take all the time. I'm tired of not having anyone choose me. I really don't feel as though I'm a priority to anyone right now. Not first, second, third, or fifteenth. And it sucks.

I have taken matters into my own hands and emailed some women I work with and the wives of some of the men I work with and asked if any of them are interested in starting a book group. I'm hoping that will foster an environment where deeper, more meaningful friendships can take root. Lately I've found myself spending lots of time with the guys at work. It's always been easier for me to develop frienships with men. I'm not really sure why that is. I find comfort in having companionship with men but realize it's not entirely healthy. And it automatically almost always puts me in the "buddy" category with them, which is adverse to my ultimate goal. I know friendships with men can be a good and healthy thing but a lot of times boundaries end up getting clouded and things get confusing. So I think for me at this time in my life, friendships with women are a better bet.

I also find myself more and more recently pontificating on Alaska again, or cutting loose to somewhere else. I know I have a community in Alaska that knows and loves me. I know I wouldn't be as thirsty for friendship there as I am now. It would be so easy for me to just pick up and leave again. I know I have a place to stay up there and good friends. I would always have something to do, someone to hang out with, and not to mention the landscape that I have grown to love on a deep level. I am not making any decisions about this right away. It won't be like last time I up and left for Alaska. It's just something I've thought a lot about lately, among other things.

I'd just ask that you (whoever might read this) be praying for me in this season of my life.

a good spring thaw ...

Do you find yourself feeling a certain way and then you read something and realize that someone else, someone outside your story, has put perfect words to something that you thought was indescribable? My friend Jeff wrote this about 3 years ago. I printed it out and have kept it in my journal or my Bible since then. I re-read it again last night and it resonated deep within me. It just fits beautifully with how I feel right now.


With the gray of the morning, I am ashen too, and forever at odds, it seems, with who you are as if the breathing in of One who just is holds no bearing, no advantage, no explanation.

Yet I write, for this art must paint you. My design is known by you, as is my longing to contain you and bring form to the formless, to rip light and its shadows from voids, to color the dull.

Fall down upon me now and create the weight of something – anything – for me to bear a piece of you. Draw near in some fashion, beyond these whimsies and conjecture, for this appetite will not be satiated with trinkets or toys. Put skin upon your flock and multiply their numbers; time their rhythm with mine, for I crave some companionship, this day, of the supernatural sort.

Bring tension to this story, I beg; release some rising action that will at once invite resolution and a looming epilogue to cap this enduring, timeless struggle.

I am crushed into the realization that my humanity, more often that not, bears no resemblance to that which you intended. I should daily die but, instead, every other day perhaps, I grasp and claw and fight my way into my will of living, the very resolve that is manmade, centric focused, self-fulfilling.

Reveal yourself to me once more, for I’m thrashing about beneath these wanderings and taunted endlessly by one who hides you from me. Offer peace to these members and calm to this spirit; cocoon me away in your infinite reality, for musings of the human sort render no such comfort.

I am tired. I am beaten. My eyes grow weary and blurred; my breathing becomes labored at times. My legs are heavy as I climb the stairs toward something, anything, above and beyond this moment.

I watch as the chapters of this story reach their glorious heights only when I realize quite shockingly that I am not the Author. Yes, surprisingly, you do a much better job than someone such as me, with my feeble existence, my limited tolerance, my pathetic shell. Even as I write this, I plead for something, anything to help me describe you.

Help me depict you, because as it is, my mind bounces this way and that as I cower at the thought of you. My writing is sporadic, stunted, all over the place, yet nowhere as I try to capture you, as I search to contain you.

As I get out my bucket and shovel and begin to work on my sand castle, you form a mountain with your bare hands. While I retrieve my crayons and my construction paper, you sweep your fingers across the sky and make a prism of color unlike any other. While I blow hot air, you breathe into the wind and engulf me into your embrace. While I puff on my horn and beat my drums, you summon nature to cascade and ripple and resound with the harmony of the ages.

You shock me, beckon me, and pull me by the ear. You embrace me, tap me on the shoulder, smack me on the bottom to get in the game. You place your hand on the small of my back, or turn me to face you. You stand in front of me, beside me, shield me, and nurture me. You even get out of my way.

You give me a free will to sin and so I do. But as one sin falls on top of another and they multiply and grow arms and legs and tentacles you never stop taking me back. I am wounded, limping for a lifetime, in fact, but there you are, down the road, on one knee, weeping as I run toward you. You’re so happy that I’m back. I run so fast to you that I knock you over when I get there, and we laugh.

Your lap is imminently ready to be crawled into, your chest large and comfortable to lay my head. You sit at my table, occupy my grief, and circumvent my catastrophes.

But I can’t mistake you for any other. No, I dare not try because you will deafen with thunder and you will rebuild kingdoms and you will not trifle with sin. Yours is a mighty fist attached to a muscular arm that keeps this planet in motion. I shudder at the reality that you are.

I try to capture the beauty of you, but no frame can contain you.

Your love is overwhelming, nearly as vast as you are. You prepare and execute a cosmic change in plans and summon your own beautiful Son to walk this earth and ride through my imagination. To fix a horrible mess that in mankind; a horrific mess that is me.

Then you turn your back on him. You reject him, your first and only born; your beloved Son, yes, just for me.

So, as I write this, I am tired and I am beaten, but oh! how thankful, how awestruck I should be!

I was not meant to prop myself up, to cling to artificiality, to pigeonhole my way, I was not designed to muscle out of this box. I am fearfully and wonderfully made and I must – yes, today I must – find my weakness made strong in all that you are.

So throw back the curtains, let the light pierce the corners! Smack the space rugs and let me watch the dust cascade and tumble into the cleansing wind. Unshackle the back porch and invite in the subtle and benign breezes. Take off the storm door of this heart and soul and hang the wind chimes once again to perform their dance, to find their part in this great orchestra.

Unfold and unravel me! Search me deep within. Turn me upside down. Find me unholy, unworthy, unabashed; and take every square inch and reconfigure me.

Reshape and retool me. Sweep away the cobwebs of bitterness, indecision, judgment and pride. Forgive in me the dusty shadows of winter, the cold and frost-covered center of my being.

Transform me to your design so that I can join in the rapture of the season.


(All emphases are the original author's)