If I Leave My Heart with You Tonight

I just dropped Jon off at the airport. Got up at 4am, no biggie. It's not a long time away by any means, but when you spend months on end seeing someone every single day, it's a shock to the system to be away for even one day. How will I ever survive eleven?! ...Heh. It's going to be a nice break and it means lots of free time to do things I need to get done but never seem to have time for. But darn it I miss him already.

There is nothing more beautiful than watching the sun rise over blue mountains and misty fields. I don't know what it is, but on this particular occasion the morning air makes me feel like I'm back in first year Bible College. I'm suddenly transported back to a similar scene: sun rising, misty field with a stand-alone tree and a cool, damp path to breakfast. It makes me think of sitting in a windowsill during sunset, a hot pink bedspread in a blue room, learning how to curl my hair, late night talks with a beautiful woman who I miss dearly, coffee stains on the carpet every morning, shower hugs and pebbles on my window. I don't know where this came from, but it's like I'm there, like I'm that person. What I wouldn't give to go back and tell her all the things I know now, all the things I wish I'd known then. Things would be so different.

But they're not. So here I am, a person who is learning and slipping and still crawling through the wilderness, being dragged through the mud in preparation for all that God has for me. Half the time, yes, I am the one who throws myself down, ties myself to the horse and then hits it with a stick, but I'm learning to better judge situations by God's standards and not my own. And when other people tie me to the horse "for my own good" or the horse just knocks me over, I'm getting better at overcoming, standing back up, and continuing on. Thank God that through all this He is carrying the load, or at least as much as I will give Him at any one time, and I do not have to do this alone.

Of Consequence

I'm trying to figure out where I stand.



Am I okay with this life, exactly the way it is, exactly where I'm at? Or should I have packed my bags and headed to Greece or back to Cuba or some lost island in the Pacific by now? When I look back in ten years, slightly more settled than now, will I regret that I spent the most fun-possible years of my life strapped into Bible college and holding a non-paying career that would better fit someone in their thirties?



Am I stupid to believe in a one true love? Here I sit: flat on my butt, waiting for the man of my dreams, because my heart has been convinced that there will only be one guy for me. Is having fun until he shows up really not an option? And what if there is never any "he" to show up? If he doesn't exist, I'm waiting around on a misty, dreamy, pathetic nothing.



Do rules really mean anything? Right and wrong? Good and bad? Just words, or do they have the eternal meaning I've been brought up with? At times I feel so settled in my convictions, and then BAM! I find myself at a loss for stability; I am no longer on the solid ground of fact. Rather, I am consumed with pondering my existence and if it's wasting away before my eyes.



Question of the day. If I were not accountable to anyone, if I felt no obligation to anyone: my family, church, friends, school; if they just didn't care or I somehow stopped caring if they cared, would I walk away? Would I abandon God's call on my life and just flit away into oblivion? Would I take the high road still, or would I allow myself to fall away and become the person only created in my most horrible nightmares and most daring, exhilarating dreams? Nevermind question of the day. This is the question of my life.



So the ultimate question I am left with is one I don't want to face. It's boring holes through my brain as I type, and I'm trying to ignore it. But here it is, hopelessly drawing itself out of the depths of...myself? Here it is, bringing itself before the world for judgment. Here it is:



Are all these questions inconsequential? Even though I mean them, does my heart already know the answer? Is the deepest part of my soul already crying: "HOLD OUT! DON'T LET GO!"? Because I fear that deep down, I have no choice, no options. Free will? No way. He's told me what He wants from me, and now that I know...how do I turn away? This scared-to-death-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling I'm getting right now tells me that I don't know what I think; I don't want to know what I think. I've been falling in love with Him every day since the day I turned eighteen, but is that enough?



I don't know if it's enough.