Think Pink

Where to Begin

Most days I sit here and stare. I want to blog, but I don't know where to start.  The parade of my days since June have seemed an endless display of angst, hurt, anger and despair, with the occasional blip of a high point. My new normal is a long time coming and though it seems that things might be easier if I just accepted this as normal, I simply refuse to do that.  We can't continue under the load we currently carry; it is crushing us.  There is a song that the hunky hubby sent to me:

The storm is coming but i don't mind.
People are dying, i close my blinds.

All that i know is i'm breathing now.

I want to change the world...instead i sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me.

But all that i know is i'm breathing.
All i can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

All that i know is i'm breathing.
All i can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.

And so it is.  Every morning, every day, every night when I climb into bed and lay pressed against his back and wonder how much longer we can do this thing and still survive intact.

I am told that there is joy in surrender and peace, but what I feel is simply numb. I know Truth, but I don't feel it.

All I can do is keep breathing.

Which way is off?

When I was about, oh thirteen or fourteen I guess (it was the summer three boys fought over me on a church trip. Smokin'!), I rode a ride called The Bullet at an amusement park in Panama City.  I didn't really want to ride it, but all my friends did, so I went along with them.  Basically the ride had two "pods" facing each other.  As the ride started the pods hung side by side, then the swung back and forth in opposite directions until they gained enough momentum to go all the way up, flip over the top and swing back down again.  Godhavemercy what was I thinking!?!?!? We'd been on the ride for about 1.5 minutes when I realized I'd made a mistake. A minute later as we crested the top into the first full loop, I realized there was only one question in my mind: which way is off? Between the sheer terror and total nausea, all I could think about, all my mind was on, the very essence of my focus was just. getting. the. heck. off. that. nightmare. Oh, and when I finally did.  I puked.  Right there. Urf.

I kind of feel like that lately.  I'm on this ride, and I'm not quite sure how I got here.  It really seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not so sold on it anymore.  We've crested that upward curve and now that downward spill is so sudden and so violent that it presses me back in the seat and takes my breath away.  What's worse, I'm not quite sure even where the bottom is or how far I have to fall.  But uppermost in mind is "Dude, which way is off?"

It's not that I despise what I do.  I don't. Reluctant though I am, in my heart of hearts I love this life.  I know, I mean I KNOW, that God's design is for us to be here, in this place, at this time, doing exactly what we were made to do. I know this because I have prayed over it, agonized over it, wept over it, shaken my fist over it, fallen to my knees over it, but man-oh-man the spiritual warfare on this side of the fence is inTENSE. There is no part of my life that is not being hammered consistently, ferociously.  Just when I get the courage to ask "Oh God, what else?" I find out what else, and it staggers me, again. I'm exhausted, but I don't sleep. I'm awake, but my actions are unclear.  I move forward, but I can't seem to make progress. I weep, but I still ache when the tears stop.  If someone had told me about this part of the ride, I am pretty darn sure I wouldn't have ever embarked on it to begin with.

and yet....

When I rode The Bullet all those years ago, in Panama City? It was terrifying.  It seemed endless.  But it wasn't until my body suddenly stopped that I become sick.  You can't move like that, full speed ahead to complete standstill, without some serious physical repercussions...kind of like a big, disgusting, puke. So I am led to the conclusion, that I might think I want to know which way is off, but getting off all-of-a-sudden isn't the answer.  In fact, I'm pretty sure, it will make me very sick.  And I'm very certain, it won't just be my stomach and my pride that suffers.

Gold

Nature's first green is gold;

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief

So dawn sinks into day

Nothing gold can stay

                    Robert Frost

This poem has rattled around in my head all day. I love Robert Frost.  I truly do.  But I haven't thought of this poem in years, and I certainly didn't know that I had this jewel in its entirity buried in my brain.  Nothing gold can stay.  It makes you think, no? Here at the time of year when things seem to draw to a close, when the lamps come on earlier and the sky deepens. It isn't really fall here.  Not like the rest of the world thinks of fall.  Still and all, it is changing, you can feel it, smell it even if you stop long enough.

I took the girls to the beach today.  We've had gale force winds for days on end and the swells are towering ten and twelve feet before they pound down into surf.  Spray and seaweed and foam crash and blow.  The sound is the deep throbbing roar of an engine.  We stood in the dunes to watch today because the beach is lost in foam and surf.  It was amazing, standing there.  We couldn't hear each other so we stayed close.  The girls caught foam, wore foam, danced in foam. I think they would have tried sledding on foam if we'd had the means.  It's certainly the closest we'll ever come to a snow strewn beach.

I stood there and watched the chaos churning and suddenly I remembered the same beach this summer in early July.  Hunky hubby and I snagged a few days away in a beach side condo.  No kids, no schedule, no clothes (ok ok--there were clothes, stop vomiting).  Then the ocean was glassy flat.  I stretched out on my back and floated gently rising and falling.  Letting time and gravity and cares slip away.  The sun baked into my skin, and rippled gold off the water. There were dolphin and pelicans and me. Floating gently without thought or care.

Amazing isn't it, that two days barely separated in time, yield such a different experience. Such is life, eh?

Nothing gold can stay.