Muddled, but gearing up

I've had three days off work this week. This is day three. The goal for the days was to rest and recuperate. I may have accomplished this.

At the present moment I'm gearing up. Today this means I am mentally preparing myself for some challenges, while eating multi-grain toast slathered with butter and strawberry jam. (Just as an aside - I don't quite understand multi-grain bread. To me, the concept of bread is something soft and delicious - multi-grain bread with bird-seed like stuff in it is just not quite there. But it's edible. It just won't ever measure up to a crispy warm loaf of white french bread. Plus, strawberry jam is definitely a second rate option next to raspberry, which we seem to be out of again.)

In a couple of hours, my friend who's mother is dying will come over. I'm a little scared for that conversation. I think things are going pretty badly for her. A couple days ago she started refusing to tell me what was going on over the phone - saying she'd tell me when she saw me. That always scares me with this particular friend. When I'm done posting, I'm going to crawl into my bed, turn on some David Crowder Band, do a little reading and a lot of praying to prepare myself for whatever comes next in this one.

After I meet with that friend, I'm spending the evening at a movie with another friend. I've known this one since I was six, but she's one of those friends who you have to "do" something with. You can't just sit down and have a conversation. It always makes me a little sad to spend time with her, because I see hurt in her life, but don't know how to touch it, have never been able to draw honesty or feeling from her. And as our relationship changed in university, I stopped sharing too. Oh, we'll cover the basics - what our families are up to, is there a guy in either of our lives, plans for the next while, but I'll come home, and it will still feel empty, and sad - the promise for so much more is there, but we can't seem to find it.

I go back to working full time tomorrow. I'm hoping for the best. I don't particularly love my job, but at the moment I don't hate it either. This next month will be filled with consultations - every bride getting married in the spring and summer wedding rush will be needing to set up gift registries, and my job is to ensure that the registry they create suits their needs and their guests budgets.

I'm still muddled. Still praying single word sentences. Someone suggested I might pray the word Grace - it's a good word. I've been praying a prayer Brennan Manning suggested in a sermon I listened to recently - "Abba, I am Yours." I'm trying to rest in that statement. To live there as I deal with some incredibly painful things that God has brought to light in my life. I feel like I'm thrashing, working hard to grab solid ground that isn't quite in reach. But I'm going to keep going. Because nothing in the previous years hurt this much - not the depression, not the numbing overwhelming struggle, but nothing felt like that moment of clarity when God reveals something, when He promises to begin a new work in your life, when He opens a wound but promises to heal it properly if I will only wait and allow Him to work. So, I'm clinging for dear life, treading water, whatever metaphor you want to use, but I'm never going back!