Words for A Wednesday

When is it, I wonder, that life settles into a furrow that feels like home? And is a furrow a place to which you're called because it signifies that you've learned contentment, or is it a place to be wary of because you're slipping into complacency? Or does it depend on who you are and how God's breathed into you--you in particular? I don't know the answers to these questions.

Dad has been in the home-est home of all for 7 months today. Life since has sometimes felt inside out and unraveled; other times it's felt more sacred than I've ever known it to be. Time is fluid and makes absolutely no sense anymore. During some moments I've never felt so disembodied, as though my soul is suspended somewhere a couple miles up watching all of this walking and talking and living going on down below, disconnected. In other moments I feel as though the parts of me that think and feel and believe and hope are buried inside so deep that when I talk to people my voice sounds muffled in my own ears. And at still other times--the most disconcerting times--life feels eerily normal, but normal in a palette of faded grays and dirty whites when what I really want right now is sunflower gold and mossy green, chicory blue and the color of everyone's eyes. When the color does come now and again, it comes in flashes, blinding and breathtaking. I want the color back, but perhaps all of life is shifting light and changing shades.

I know that grieving takes a long time. Yes, the nature of grief has changed; I feel air stirring in new spaces inside of me that weren't there before. More than anything else right now, though, it's simply confusing. I think it's a combination of lots of things right now, not just missing Dad. Life is packed down to the minute these days.

For those of you who check in on me here occasionally, I hope you know not to worry at all when you see that I'm pretty much writing about the same thing over and over again but in different words. In the deepest sense, I am well. Truly. For some reason, though, it has become hard to write about anything but this business of loneliness, of missing what was and what's never been that has taken hold of my spirit. Other topics have been creeping in occasionally, but I understand that to those on the outside seven months is a long time to write about the same thing. Perhaps it's getting stale. It is a long time to be so introspective. That's just what comes out in the writing, though. For the past many months I've written when I needed to get something out because it was getting too dark on the inside. Once it's out there's a bit of release.

Life apart from that has been brimful. All I can really say is this: If you want to feel small, teach. If you want to love, teach. If you want to be a single person who feels like she has dozens of children to bring up right, teach. If you want to learn, teach.

I'm glad God is patient.

I think I've been trying His patience.

And I'm glad God is love.

Because I'm pretty certain it hasn't run out yet.