Tea with Mr. Wilde and God

I like my life.

It is small and quiet and often times difficult. I can't really afford much, but there is always enough, every time. I have a handful of close friends here and the circle gets smaller every time life changes. There are healthy good byes and less healthy good byes and there are a lot of far away people that I love very much. But my handful of people that I hold here know me and I like to believe that the depth of love and the miles of life we have covered together is more than a fair trade for the small number. I am ever so slowly learning how to be a healthy human being before God and learning enough about myself to figure out where I want to go. The questions are not all answered, but I am sure that I will have them when I need them. I really do like my life, the people in it, and where I am going.

I need to remember that sometimes. It is so easy to forget in the natural process of moving forward and changing and growing and striving. It can be so easy to lose sight of such a quiet feeling while I am reacting to deadlines and people I like and people I don't especially when those two people are actually the same person. But right now, in the Sunday quiet of my house with too many too busy people, before all of the trying to be who I am becoming starts, and before I begin to take on all of the descriptors for the roles I will play today, I want to remember that I really do like where I am at.

I think life would be a lot less stressful if I could hold onto that while I race through my days. I think I would be better at remembering that if I gave myself the time in the mornings that I promised God I would. It's like he knows what I need, like he's on my side trying to help me first, be healthy and second, stay healthy. Weird.

But I am fighting so hard to be so good that I forget that I do not have to fight him. In fact, most of the fighting I do is fighting that he would gladly do for me if I would just stand on the promises he has made and let him fight for me. As long as I am fighting, however, he stands aside so he doesn't hurt me... so that I know he is there after I beat myself up. I do a fine job of that even during this part of my life that I like so well.

Today, I woke up two hours before I needed to be awake after a whole night of dreaming that everything that I need to do in the next three weeks needed to happen and be finished tomorrow. I was so frustrated and anxious that I could not sleep and then I realized that I was probably going about life wrong again. I was probably fighting too hard when there wasn't really a fight to be had. So today here is what I need to remember (and what I will likely need to know again and again for the rest of my life):

I am loved and I am learning how to love. I am loved by God and by the people he places around me and most days, I don't get to know why. But I do get to know that that is enough. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

One final thought for the rest of today, "Who being loved, could be poor?" [Oscar Wilde]

If we believe these stories...

I was sitting in church the first time I followed that thought: "If we believe these stories..." And my black pen met my black book because I liked the sound of those words and I wanted to inspect their truth later. It has been a month or two or three since (not more than three though) and I still like them.

The sermon was on Psalm 105 and it asked us "why do we focus on the one thing that God has not done and ignore all that he has done?" Verse 14 talks about how God has moved kings for his small group of sojourners. It was good to be sure, but I think the most I got out of it was this phrase that would follow me..."if we believe these stories..."

I look at my Bible and I tell the world that I believe the words written in it. I promise to live by them and, perhaps, to die by them. But I forget.

Tonight is heavy. It doesn't have to be, but there are forces and people beyond my control making decisions, and they do not care that I am wrapped up in their story. They do not grasp the depth of their own significance, especially when one names them family...and that is ok. It is not good; but, quite simply, it is not the point. It is a symptom, not the problem itself. And so, tonight is heavy because I am waiting and hurting and trying to guess at the end. And because I am human. A woman living on a planet under a curse.

And I want to know what to do. I want to know how long this will last. I want to catalog all of my complaints and deliver them to heaven with a final request of answers in the same orderly fashion. Most of all, I want a promise that life wont always be this way, because, quite honestly, it has been just this for such a long time.

So I am sitting again, this time, weeks later, in my room. And just like that, I am holding that black book and looking at my Bible and hearing those words, "if we believe these stories..." Then what? At the time, the first time, I wrote: "If believe these stories...we should realize that we do not stand upon the shoulders of giants only, as the saying goes. But we stand and fall by the breath of God. A God of ancient goodness. We should have fallen a long time ago; but we forget our frailness and think ourselves invincible."

I wont get all of my answers delivered to me in bullet point form--that's hardly a way to live. But I get what I most want. It's truth. And it's a promise that life wont always be this. I forget what has been done and I get so afraid of something I know is not true. "There is a time for everything, for every activity under the sun." "Hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?"

If I believe these stories, it changes everything. There are hundreds of people in that book who have fought their way through living. It is not a plan in black and white with diagrams, but it takes care of the bigger issues. It makes itself useful to all people in all places at all times...and it answers my fear and my humanity. It gives me just enough.