The heart has a wild way of healing itself. I know, I'm supposed to say it's God working in me and perhaps it is and I suppose I'm just a bit dense or arrogant or something to think that sometimes things just plain come about. I know in the end, it's all the Divine cosmic workings of an amazing God, but quite frankly, it's often beyond the scope of what I am capable of investing mental energy in to or even begin trying to make sense of. I am much like Pooh, a girl of small brain.
In other ways, I just plain don't need to know all the details. I like a little mystery in life.
The point, two paragraphs ago was this though, hearts heal. Or wounds scab over. Or things just loose their sting over time. Somehow it all gets washed over like the pebbles on the shore of the ocean. The tides come and go, the waves crash over and then rush back out. The pebbles roll over each other and the sharp edges are worn off.
Pain in life is much the same, or at least in my life. Maybe I'm just lazy or old or something, but I don't have the energy really, to nurse along hurts for very long. I don't like the feelings of having my very life and soul sucked from me.
And with restoration and renewal comes sunrises and fresh breezes. Along with it comes hope.
Hope is critical. At least it's critical to me. I like to believe it's critical to all people. I can't imagine, well, really I can, but it scares me, a life without hope. Hope is the thing that lets us take the next steps. Hope is the thing that lets us love.
In the end, this crazy ride of life is about love. Whether or not you're a believer, in the end, it boils down to love. Maybe it plays itself out in how you become self destructive in your quest for love. Or maybe it looks like love of a tangible thing instead of human contact. Maybe it plays out in your work or your charity of choice. Maybe it shows in your faith walk. I don't know. But I do believe it all comes down to love in the end.
We spend our lives trying to find it and receive it and really feel it down deep in the ways that fill the voids.
I know, I know, it's Christ that fills the voids. I know the Sunday school answers and so do you.
sigh
We're living lives in boxes and categories and safe little comfort zones. It's sad.
Ah well, we do it to ourselves.
Interestingly enough this is not at all where I had intended to take this particular pile of words but here we are anyway.
Where I meant to go was to the place I've been walking my way to. I'm learning to ready myself for the next. I'm putting Little One into the quiet places in my heart. I'm almost at ease with the tears, now knowing that they'll never really leave me. I'm getting over my shock at the fierceness with which I almost yelled at someone so very dear to me that there would never be a replacement for him. I am still surprised over that moment. There was an intensity to that moment I never expected. But it's very true. He can not be replaced. Not for me. I can learn to let him go in a way, but not replace.
I am learning to walk into and accept the ebb and flow of precious people in my life. I know, the world is small now, with all the abundant technology that I can't begin to understand let alone navigate. I know, those I love deeply I will always love, no matter where they wander and the spaces that come and go between us. Each and every relationship in this mortal life has it's path and pattern of intensity and slack. It's all in the embrace. And then the breath before the letting go, the release into the slack.
I'm learning to quit my selfishness. In the short time since Little One has moved on, I've come to love my spaces, my silences, the ease and peace that comes with "only" 3 kids and their pace of life. It's one of the first breaks I've had from baby life in a long, long time. A break I sincerely did not want. But now...I hesitate to admit how much I like this break, because I know I'm called to continue. There are more kids to come and I'm almost ready. But I'm also basking in the spaces of time I can fill up with words scattered across papers and screens. The balance of dreaming and living, of answering yes to a call and working towards the impossible.
I'm coming to terms with how I'm selfishly saving spaces. I know everyone would and will cooperate with any and all shifting around of physical spaces here in the Kingdom house, but I also know hearts will hurt and feelings will be squeezed and most of those will be my own. I am still, short months away from 40, the best drama queen I know. I may not always show it off to the world, but inside my private mind, it's there, rocking my world.
And then there is the endless quest for this thing we call self control when often I really just want to listen to my inner dialogue, my inner bohemian writer fantasy that says, just let me have a little space, a little more fun than what I'm allowed in this very stifled Christian captivity. It's a fine line of insanity to try to balance or maybe banish the desires for what we're supposed to be.
Again, I know the Sunday school answers. I'm no stranger to prayer or my Bible. I'm working my way through, cover to cover, yet again. It doesn't make me less broken or meandering. Not at all. In fact, it's a little bit the opposite. The more I learn, the more I surrender, the more the other side reaches out and tries not to be suppressed.
It's hard to reconcile the idea that I am created by God, according to His will and yet there are these quirks and such that just don't "go" with or fit into this whole Christian scheme. It's almost a bit like cracking a code to me or finding the clue to answer the puzzle. I don't want to be some version of Christian that is created by broken, confused human minds and yet I'm not so certain my mind is the one to trust. On the other hand, it's really hard to take the whole Bible, every last word as absolute truth. Not because I don't believe it to be true. I do. I just don't necessarily like it all. I don't necessarily understand how it all works right now today in my "modern" life.
I know, truth is timeless. Well, it is. Yes and no.
I think perhaps I live too much in the gray instead of the black and white. My life has never really played out in the black and white absolutes of life. I don't know why it hasn't. It's just always been more gray than anything else.
Honestly, I like it that way. Now maybe it's a chicken and the egg thing. I like it that way because it's always been that way or vice versa. Either way, it is.
And so it brings me almost back around to the start of all this.
I'm almost ready. I'm almost ready to take the next children. It's almost time.
