personal day

i warn you, this may be a book.

after coffee with abby at 7 and breakfast with katie at 8:30, i veered west on north avenue away from the office and called my boss to tell him i'd be taking a personal day.

my eyes are red, my eyelids are heavy, and my body feels weak. if you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know this isn't abnormal. my friend wendy told me once that god will store up your tears in heaven and give you your own body of water when you get there. subconsciously, i think my spirit wants an ocean.

i like being home today. i like getting up early and having coffee with a good friend, meeting another for breakfast and then heading home to contemplate our conversations. i like walking back from the el in the sunshine, like watching the shop owners open their boutiques for the day, like listening to the construction men yell to each other on top of the roof of the house next door. and then i like to sit down and write. makes me wish i could be like anne lammot. i'd finally let my hair grow dreads, i'd try to cook something that is impossible for someone like me to make, and then i'd sit down to write my one great novel that indeed would never become anything except a journal of too much information for my embarrassed teenage children when their friends discover it while searching for frisbees in the garage. alas ... it changes nothing that i still wish to write.

i've written 10 pages in my journal in the past two days. it's been wonderful. each time i've put my pen down, i feel like, yes, THIS is what i can give god. it's the best part of writing. but for as cathartic as it is, it hasn't made me whole. i suppose i didn't expect it to. but i wanted that feeling that artists get when they finally complete a painting. like a big sigh of relief. a feeling of mission accomplished. a feeling of "what's next?" instead, the more i write, the more brokenness i find. and the more brokenness i find, the more i see the depth of my own complexity. and the deeper it goes, the more i fear picking up the pen again.

but this is a good thing. after a few fretful finger lunges, my soul inevitably rises to the challenge; i feel that enough.

you know, sometimes you think back to what you dreamed you'd be like in 5 years, 5 years ago. when i was 19, i didn't expect my life to be this. now, my mind is consumed with plans for safety and security, with desires for people-pleasing and politesse, with hopes to simply survive. and what's worse, i found myself calling god a liar in church on sunday. the second my mind yelled it, my heart broke.

am i this bitter? this fearful of god? this unbelieving? or worse yet, have i created a god in my own image?

*sigh* i have to stop here, though i want to write so much more! i want to explain it, want to really share, but this is a blog. people will read this, thank god it's not them (it's true, i think one of my spritiual gifts is reverse encouragement) and move on. this is a good thing. you can't stay in one place for too long. god doesn't let me wallow in my own brokenness even. he lets me feel how it hurts and then i see better how the world hurts. it's my own complexity that stirs me to see more than myself. it makes no sense, i know, and i can't untangle it properly. but it's when i'm here, in the mess, in the gritty dirtiness of my own stink, that my senses are most acutely aware that god is moving everywhere.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm sure god will spend lots of time with me on all this stuff in my own heart. i'm learning to pray again, and i have the most incredible friends who see in me things i don't, can't or refuse to see in my own life and speak truth to it. i have a lot to be thankful for. i forget that.

well the cd i've been listening to has finished. or, rather, i got to song #9 on the damien rice cd "O" and it nearly jolted me from my seat, effectively ending my rapidly digressing train of thought (seriously, what's with musicians and their obsession with throwing in a last track to electrify you from peace to chaos? geez).

guess i got some time now to clean my house ... who am i kidding? it's too beautiful outside for that. i think i'll go sit outside and eavesdrop on the conversations of construction men next door.