Waiting for the Exhale.

I cannot tell you with what great agony I begin yet another paper.

I have been diligent. I have been as focused as my body will allow. I have been committed. And yet, I still only have 3 days to read about and write a rather large paper on the book of Revelation. I finished a different large paper yesterday and turned it in. Today is a new day! And a new paper.

My mind is explosive.

I have exactly the minimum amount of time to do this. If I use my time well...if I keep trying...if I push hard, I can do this and all the other tasks which demand my attention.

But there are tasks which will never make such demands. Those are my favorites. They are not pushy because they are fragile and will quickly be trampled and drowned if they assert their own importance in the ocean of errands. They are kind, giving me more than they ever take away. They do not seek to be my master and they know only a little of discipline, of struggle, and of pain. They are polite...always respecting whatever decisions I make and never holding my lack of wisdom against me.

These tasks are labors of love and imagination. They are not concrete or physical and they cannot give me a leg up in the world. What they can give me is all that I want and it pains me to deny them space and time to be. I make empty promises which I hope to be able to fill knowing that merely wishing it were so changes nothing.

These empty promises grow hungry and gnaw upon me from the inside.

I become vacuous.

What was once going to explode begins to shift, turn inward, and give me new fears. The mass of my hopes, fears, and promises may be enough to draw me tightly to my core in one final inhale as I implode.

I'm just waiting for tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes.

5 of 10 *Note: I did not know who this metaphor was for or where it would be used, until today.

The bottles clatter outside in the trash can.
I know you are home and what you are doing
Before I ever see your face.
I feel the plates of our world buckle and bend.
I hear the rumbling of tectonics,
The shifting of the way things are.
When you finally stumble in, fall up the stairs,
Everything I already know is confirmed.

And I smile like nothing is different
Because, in a way, nothing really is.
You must feel like a Greek god
When you move the Richter scale.
At least, that is what I figure.
I know, much more than you realize,
How hard a man has to fight for control
And what it feels like to have the world against you.

But that will never make you right.
You are sorry every single time
And that helps.
That helps until the next.
There always is a next time.
More bottles. More words. More shame.
Yet, it only takes one good night's sleep
In the arms of forgiveness to forget.

I should probably thank you though;
But I think that you would assume
That I was making fun of you.
I mean it though.
Your earthquakes have taught me
So many things like what disaster really is,
How to pray, where exactly I stand,
And the deceitfulness of ideas like security.

It has taken years of growing up,
But I have finally learned
How to be more than a survivor.
That, also, is something I am thankful for.
Getting by was never enough for living.
However, I am not fool enough to thank you.
You, sir, cannot take all the credit.
May I remind you, that things do not have to be this way?

Things do not have to be the way they are.
God forgive me, then remind me,
If I ever, ever let go of that.
And the way they are is wrong.
This constant shifting but never changing
Will not be forever.
You may be the Greek god of plate-tectonics
But no one worships the pantheon anymore.

forgiveness is a funny thing

Regardless of religion, forgiveness is an important part of being a healthy human being. People weren't made to store up life times of hurt and offense. We can survive such horrors, but the living afterwards can only be called life if we leave the survivor's camps and build something new. I could never accept a religion that ignored the need for forgiveness. We hurt people. We do it more often than we ever like, and it is not all their fault or just poor circumstance. We are going to need forgiveness. And so are they.

It is always different in practice than in theory largely, I think, because we talk about forgiveness so cheaply like it is a makeup we can apply in the morning if we have a zit making an appearance. It is a choice that goes so much deeper. And more.

Because it is rarely enough to make the choice once.

Even once per incident. At some point, somebody is going to hurt you, probably for a long period of time and you won't get to know when to expect it to be over. It is perhaps the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do, this forgiveness thing, when someone is still hurting you to keep forgiving them every day... every time you are reminded of that something. Too often I have acted like things should not hurt if forgiveness is there. I wish.

It is not an anesthetic. It is accepted vulnerability couched in frequently misunderstood strength. It makes no sense. I guess it is the endurance test of love. Can it really endure all things? How patient can it be? There is a balance because forgiveness is not devaluing yourself and it is not ignoring wrongs. I think it is freedom.

To heal.

To go forward.

To live.

And living hurts. It requires the full spectrum of emotions because there will be terrible-no-good-very-bad-days and really freaking fantastic ones. Only human beings get to live through both, and you cannot shut out the bad. It's not a privilege you get unless you trade in your freedoms. That is what impresses me about Christianity. To see Jesus on the cross, barely alive, dying someone else's death...and still breathing forgiveness...even though they aren't even done with him yet. He doesn't wait. And it doesn't make any sense. But I think this is because I cannot yet comprehend a love like that.