Struggling

I'm not sure what to say right now.

I came home from work at noon, made a few essential phone calls, and went to bed.

I don't have the flu or a cold, but I'm so completely emotionally and spiritually exhausted that I decided to call it a day.

I cried twice in the first half-hour of the day. All it took was for someone to ask me how my weekend was. (For the record, it wasn't bad, though quite hard at moments.)

Several people took one look at me and asked if I was okay.

The answer right now is no.

I'm wrestling with some very large issues, and some very loud voices.

The tears and throbbing pain have numbed a bit just at the moment, but I have no doubt they'll surface hugely again.

I need to make some decisions, but I have no idea how to attempt that. I'm actually scared to do that from this emotional space where I'm not able to process or think clearly.

I'm also staring an anniversary in the face this week. An anniversary that is usually full of hope. I'm not really sure what it holds this year, and in some ways I'm asking if there is anything left to celebrate. And that, my friends, is the most discouraging thought I've faced in the last four years.

I've been trying very hard to hold life together, and it's not working right now. Trying so hard to find the joy and the positives, to change entrenched patterns of thought. And I've had a few successes, but it's exhausting and seems larger than life, and nearly hopeless.

So, I'm going to sit, and cry if the tears will flow, and try to pray. And work to trust that Jesus sees and hears and holds me in this space, and not just in the joyful ones where I am able to perfectly fall in line with his voice.

Welcome each visitor...

Two quotes and a link. My own thoughts are just not fitting for public consumption. I've laid on the couch for nearly a full day. I'm feeling slightly more rested, and but still deeply sad and exhausted. Tomorrow morning I'll go back to work and start again. This is a season of breaking, of shattering, of wondering if wholeness will ever happen again, and do I really want it anyway? Of evaluating the high costs of various decisions. Of questions and elusive future possibilities. Of silence and oftentimes loneliness (even in the midst of crowds). Of fasting. Of thinking and praying and wondering and waiting. Of agonizing and weeping. Of opening my life to the thousand and one sorrows that surround me, and letting them change things in my heart. Of crying out to God in the desperate hope that he will hear and respond and send peace.

I'm going with my best friend to a panel discussion on genocide - in Rwanda and Darfur - in a few hours. We'll eat together first, and then listen, and once again I'm sure my heart will shatter.

So, two quotes and a link. That's all I can manage for public consumption.

Sara Miles describes a conversation soon after she'd become a Christian, with an old friend, where, as he shared the pain in his life, she recommended he pray. She writes:

"When you told me to pray," Jose would remember later, "it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it or deny it."

I had to be receptive or go crazy - because even as I kept going to church, the questions raised by the experience only multiplied. Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.
(Sara Miles, "Take This Bread", pg. 70)

The poet Rumi writes:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meannness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for
some new delight.

I first came across that poem a few years back, as the inspiration for this story, "The Crowded House".

To be receptive to the unfulfilled spaces and not fill or deny them, and to welcome each visitor, even if they're a crowd of sorrows. This is the space I am working to occupy.

Sad

One word. Three letters. The best way I can come up with to describe what I'm feeling tonight.

I sat on the train coming home from time with a friend, quietly listening and praying. Letting things flow over me. Letting them touch my soul.

Sad.

I'm seeing the brokenness tonight. The hurt. The things with no quick and easy solution. And I'm feeling them deep in my soul.