The day that just won't end.

4am and I was still awake. I stopped staring at the ceiling and checked my e-mail. A friend had e-mailed last night pretty much just asking me to say something.

So I wrote to her:

It's 4am and I'm very unfortunately awake, considering painting the trim in my bedroom, cleaning my house top to bottom, and if all else fails, attempting to ride my bike to Mexico. How Mexico comes in exactly I don't know, except that it did pass through my mind this morning that if I left right then I could probably be in Mexico with her and impossible to find before they ever even started looking for us. I wouldn't have done it, it just passed through.

To which she replied only as someone who has been here could have replied:

I thought of running away to Biloxi, changing our names to Nora, Stan, David and Annie and living incognito for the rest of our lives. Didn't do that either.
Cleaning is a good alternative. So is painting. So is prayer and bargaining which will not be answered, but will be heard.
It gets better, but it never gets good where that's concerned.
I'm with you.



--- Somewhere around 5am the words "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord." ran through my mind. I managed to fall asleep then though not for long because the sun doesn't care if it's brightness wakes you up or not.

I turned my computer on, and put it on a christian radio channel and let it play, then sat in the floor wondering what to do with the day. There's no reason for doing anything right now except that it passes time. How a day could take so long to end is beyond me. It still won't end.

So I walked to the library and returned Little Ones library books. Came home, and threw a bunch of stuff away and cleaned outside my house because it was less quiet outside.

I finished all too soon and wondered what to tackle next when I realized I could tackle stuff Monday night also. A week night. I hadn't looked that far forward into life in the coming week. I haven't gotten a lot accomplished on weeknights since Little One arrived, and I realized how quiet those nights would be.

Then comes those blasted tears again.
But this time they were fortunately distracted by the phone ringing. It was my pastor calling to invite me to church tomorrow with the promise I wouldn't have to work at all.
I only know this because he left a message, I didn't answer the phone. Sorry Pastor. I'd have sounded all snotty anyway, and I don't mean rude.



I love being single, I love the quiet, and I even love being childless, but it's hard to revert back to. Right now, the quiet is louder than it used to be and hard to get used to. It will happen, I'll get use to this life again, but I wonder now what I'll be like when I finally crawl off the floor and stand up again.

I also wonder how I filled my time just 7 months ago. Surely I didn't just sit around all day and night, what did I do? Not enough I think.

For all the strange, evil, scary and hurtful things I've seen this last year I found myself trying to figure the God/child relationship out. Why on earth did God send me in this direction when He knew I'd crash like this? The best analogy I can think of came sometime in the middle of the night last night. I imagined a child that loves it's dad, trusts it's dad, and thinks their dad is the greatest thing on earth. And then one day, dad throws the child in the deep end of the pool.

Dad's not going to let the kid drown, if something happens he'll pull the kid out, but he's going to teach him to swim the quick way. So the kid is in the water, screaming "DAD!", panicking, and taking in swallows of water, convinced he's going to die and wondering why on earth dad would do such a thing and not come help him out of the water.
Of course, the kid doesn't die, and ultimately he did learn some about swimming.
But the kids perception of dad changes at least until the trauma of the panic subsides.

I've been hesitant to say this before, but for the last several months my relationship with God has felt like an abusive relationship. You know, the husband slaps you against the wall but then comes back and says they love you and the only reason they did it was because you made them angry or that you just had to learn.

My entire relationship with God prior to this last year, everything I know about God from the past, tells me it's not true. But.

I don't want to be a fair-weather Christian. But with this storm I've seen my thoughts have become survival centered: "Where's land? and how quick can I get off this boat?" If I ever had any aspirations of being like Peter, stepping out onto the water in the middle of the storm to walk to the Savior... well, it ain't gonna happen.

I remember last Sunday, all I could tell God was how sorry I was. If this is a test, it's got a big red F stamped on it. I'm sorry I can't just drop all these feelings and be happy because my sins are forgiven.

Billy Graham told me tonight that's where happiness comes from; not from the world or circumstances, but from knowing your sins are forgiven. I wonder where he'd say unhappiness comes from?