Ache!


There is always a dull ache for me to put pen to parchment. It usually happens at the most inopportune moments. When I’m working, driving, or doing basic algebra. I used to write every day…EVERY DAY! Now my journal is collecting dust & I find it increasingly more difficult to hold onto those epiphany moments. This time of year would usually consist of Hot Chocolate, Christmas music & my little fingers stroking the keyboard pouring out some sappy, slightly melodramatic Christmas story for all to read. I’m missing these moments…the moments that made me a bit saner. I’ve been a wee bit neurotic here lately. I’m playing the “pretty please” game…”pretty please won’t you like me!” I’m driving myself a bit batty. I feel untethered, lost & floating in an expanse of nothingness. I feel, often, like I’m peering in at my life through a porthole. This rich, amazing, unbelievable life God has given me.

I’ve been treating my heart a bit like an ash heap - the refuse of this life spilling in making it unusable & stinky. My desire to figure this journey out has completely overwhelmed the mystery. If I’m good enough try hard enough, strive to see down the road, then I might create a life others will view rich, full, and complete.

Something didn’t happen yesterday. It was a tiny little thing I wanted. I felt if I got this thing it would soothe the ache, the swallowed up feeling. When it didn’t come I felt so utterly lost in despair. I was gripped with the painful fear of being found out. “You’re a fake!” “You’re a loser!” “You seriously think that!” Sometimes I question God for creating me with such palpable consuming emotions. It is the tender part of me that makes me more aware of the hurting & suffering of others, but it also can be a crutch I lean on. It takes time for me to expose my layers to people, but I want an intimacy and closeness instantaneously. The sweet aromatic perfume of intimacy takes time. It isn’t a, “wam, bam, thank you mam”, one night stand! True intimacy, like a fine wine, takes years to cultivate all the layers & notes of which one can drink deeply & savor.

This journey isn’t meant to be easy. It isn’t meant to be lived in the shallow box of self-absorption either. There is pain, heartache, suffering, fear, despair, & uncertainty. To risk these things in the effort of finding love, joy, peace, hope, purpose, & life is the fine art of what real intimacy is about. When I say that I just want to love on people I really mean that. It isn’t some fake nice thing to say. I appreciate when people call me nice & sweet. It means a lot that these traits are so easily seen in me. But, it feels to me at times like calling a puppy “nice & sweet” when you aren’t the one cleaning up the messes it makes all over the floor. There is a complexity to me, to each of us, that cannot be grasped at that first initial meeting. My deepest desire is for someone to see the wonderfully tragic mess I am, the beautiful flawed child of a loving God, & get that this is where my passion for love comes from. Let’s throw away pretense, let the walls come down a little, & love for real.

I’m 31 years old & just plain tired of playing games. I’m plain tired of trying to get people to like me. It honestly might be a little refreshing, while hard, for me to hear that someone doesn’t like me. I don’t think the “pretty please” game is working for me anymore. I need genuine. To be completely honest, I’ve roll played so much that I don’t know what that looks like. We all put on faces, I know this. All I have to do is look at Facebook to see that. It is another mask worn to show people the ideal we want them to see. As Sara Groves says, “there are so many fakers; I myself have faked it I should know!”

I don’t really know where I’m going with this at all. I just started writing. If I didn’t I was going to implode, ashes carried upon the wind. When my life is over I pray that someone will say that girl loved, she lived, God’s light shown all through her cracked Alabaster…she was no charlatan.

I don’t know what my life is going to look like in 10 years. The dreams & plans I had got whittled away by the Master’s hand. I am so unbelievably stubborn. I am not moldable clay in His hands. He has had to cut so much dry cracked clay from me I’m surprised there is anything usable left…yet, He uses it! In my mess He makes a masterpiece. I do not understand this mysterious wondrous God I serve. I do not know why He puts up with me…far be it, loves me with reckless abandon. I treat Him so poorly.

My heart is a barren wasteland, but this is when He gets to shine. He gets to come in & clean up all the yuckyness. So in conclusion, my head thrown back, raspy voice singing:

“My body’s tired from trying to bring you here. My brow is furrowed trying to see thing clear. So I’ll turn my back to the black & fall…& wait for the mystery to rise up & meet me…” – Sara Groves.

15 But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering;
he speaks to them in their affliction.

16 “He is wooing you from the jaws of distress
to a spacious place free from restriction,
to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.

-          Job 36: 15-16

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