One of the most exhausting things I've experienced in life is to be pulled in two very different directions. I think, too, as Christians, this is an almost never-ending battle...never-ending, until the End. (An End to which I look forward with most anticipation.) My flesh, versus my spirit--a battle God promises us, but even with the guarantee is made no less difficult.

I already battle a never-resting mind. Even in my sleep I dream long, detailed, decision-rampant dreams; I get no breaks from my over-active mind. I don't say this as a complaint, necessarily. More just a statement of fact to paint a picture of the way I'm pulled every which way, every day.

I love shoes. I love clothes. I love fashion and looking good and dressing up. So I spend time maybe once or twice a month looking at my favorite websites at inexpensive clothes; I stick all the things I 'can't live without' in my shopping cart, and when I'm finished looking through every page at all the things I love (tops, shoes, bags, and necklaces), I go back through my shopping cart and pick a few things to actually buy. So I guess that's not a horrible practice. I don't spend hundreds of dollars a month on cute clothes...but I would like to. I would like to have a room-sized closet, wall-to-wall filled with beautiful things (very well organized). I would love to have a shoe wall-- a wall with ceiling-high shelves and row after row of glamorous heels.

But while I'm sitting here dreaming of said closet, I can't help but frown upon myself and these silly moments of flesh-relapse. While I sift through pages and pages of aesthetically pleasing attire, I feel a gnawing somewhere deep in my heart that tells me, "But this isn't what you were made for." (Can you believe my conscience ends sentences in prepositions?) My spirit is committed to something else. I don't want to say "greater," because that's not fair, and awfully judgmental, to people who don't have the future desires I have. So it's not "something greater," it's just something very different, on a personal level, that my spirit and I know, and have known, I've been committed to for a very long time.

This commitment has something to do with life being ever-short-- a brief and tiny flash of time spent here, and what I do with that little time. I'm still not sure what I believe as for purpose. Does God birth us for something specific, or do we assign our own? Either way, I'm to the same conclusion that my life is not about fancy clothes and shoes and shiny necklaces, but is far more about helping to give meaning to the lives of others. Not that a person can't do both, but I don't believe I can, because the shoes and the people are two very great loves for me-- loves that/who are at a constant battle for my affection. And because of this battle, because I can't seem to make room for both, I must prioritize. And people always, always come before things.

People are beautiful, and tender, and broken, and often unloved, and so they need my love, my care, concern, and attention. I could wear cute shoes and attend to hurting people. I could. But I can't. I want to love people who ache for love, and they don't need me to look any certain way. They just need me. My kindness or generosity won't be extended by a pretty blouse, but it could, in some circumstances, be limited. And if I'm truly going to devote my life to practically loving unloved people, how can I carry on in life with even the tiniest limitation on that love?

Anyway, as usual toward the end of my ramblings I'm getting muddled. But I write these things for me, anyway, and I think I've said to myself what I need to say.

:)

So we all know I have issues. Commitment issues, lazy issues, procrastination issues...now daddy issues. But I've always had boy issues most of all (duh, right?). So I'm in this situation and I don't know what to do with myself. Well, ok, I know what to do. Walk away of course. Not care, of course. Forget about him, of course. But I'm no good at those things! Really, really no good.

So this boy. He drives me crazy when I'm with him. I mean, literally, all I think about is, "Oh m'word, is this guy for real?" He's so...self-absorbed. Not really in a cocky way; I don't think he thinks incredibly highly of himself...but he's ignorant of other's feelings. But we have so much fun anyway. I should qualify that, I suppose, because we don't seem to connect at all until we're drinking beer. It doesn't even have to be multiple beers, just enough that we're both relaxed. He seems to care more for people after a good beer. Or something? Oh who knows.

So he's incredibly, incredibly attractive. I'm talking, model-in-a-magazine attractive. He has, in fact, modeled for a magazine, but he's totally embarrassed by it, and never wants to do it again. He's rugged, tall, built, has a smile that could stop traffic (at least female traffic at a mall or something), and beautifully intense eyes. He's not a jerk in the usual sense...he's actually very nice. Very, very friendly and outgoing. Knows no stranger, all that. Oh, perhaps I should mention the dimples. Really, added up together, it's just not fair. To anyone. No one should be so pretty and not gated into Hollywood or something. I don't want to see someone that good looking out on the street in my neighborhood. It's not right.

So anyway. I hang out with the guy once every couple months or so, and I have yet to understand our interactions. He calls me beautiful and sexy, and to put it bluntly, he wants to sleep with me. So I guess he finds me attractive..?? But I know, really, really know, I would never, ever date him. Oh never, never. It makes me shutter a little bit to imagine such things. But I still want to be around him. I still want him to want me. He's by no means chasing me...he doesn't call often (I never call him), and he never makes advanced plans. Like, "Well, you wanna hang out next week, too?" Ha. No. So maybe it's the mystery (together with the dimples, of course), that I can't resist. I keep spending time and energy on this fellow. Granted, I limit our time to beer time, 'cause it's practically painful hanging out with him drinkless.

So what do I do? I know, I know: forget him. Move on. Et cetera, Et cetera, whatever. If it were that easy, we wouldn't have a romance movie genre at all. Oy. Somebody tell me something really wise. Something really smart that snaps me out of this entanglement. Bah!

Things I already know:

-He doesn't really care about me.

-You can never trust a pretty boy.

-Don't have sex with him. (This is not a problem. And a bit of a funny story.)

-Forget about him.

-Move on.

-Don't answer his calls.

-Don't answer his texts.

-Talk to him about how you feel. (That's never going to happen. Ever.)

I love him so endlessly, this Baby Chas. He is all perfection and all joy, and he is a glorious picture of God's grace; he is truly a gift. He doesn't seem real, and I can hardly believe he's here, with us...for us...for the rest of what time our God gives us all.

I still ache for my dad. There's no "but." There's no, "but having Chas makes my dad's absence more bearable," because it doesn't. He is a new piece of my heart; he'll never be replaced, but in turn, cannot replace. My dad should be here for this. He should be here to hold him, wide-eyed and tearful, looking into that sweet new face and promising Chas, and the rest of us, a beautiful, peaceful, perfect future.

I want so badly for the one life to make the pain of the lost one less. I want so badly for Chas's birth to be so profound and so life-altering, that losing my dad is a shadow of a stabbing memory. But it's not. Perhaps I'm let down by that.

I still thank God relentlessly. For both one and the other, in the same breath, and without pause. I thank God for the 24 years with one, and the 24 hours with the other. I thank God for a beating, feeling heart, that I may feel so acutely the pain of the loss of the one, because without this intense pain, I don't believe I would be able to feel this intense joy, however separate. I thank God that he made me so capable of love.

Suddenly, I have passion. Suddenly, I feel like I've woken up. I feel like I've been sleeping for so long. For years. Forever. I want to be drastic. I want to do something severe; something that will forever change me. I want to sell everything I own, pay off my debt, and move somewhere. A place where I might help someone. I don't want to want anymore. I want to be emptied of *things and refilled with passion and love and tenderness. I want a fire that never slows, that burns red and blue. Flames that stretch and lick and glow. I want the fire to consume me at this very hour, and only with time grow and widen and burn all the more.

I've always known I'm different. I've always known I'm made, designed, fashioned for something hard and wearying and unjust. I've always known I was intended for this wild fire, this wild love, and a wild ability to, like fire, expand and move and grow and change directions at the slightest breeze. I am a wild creature. And I feel as though I have finally been set free.

It doesn't matter where I begin. What I sell first, or how I sell it. Just that I do begin. That I, being set free, release this wild desperation to do something more. It's time.

i've been dreaming about my dad again. when he first died, i dreamed about him several times in a night, every night. but that lulled for quite a while. i hadn't been dreaming about him for at least a year until recently, and now it seems to be every night again.

the dreams are weird. it's my dad's body, but his character is strangely altered. he's usually mad and angry, but in the dreams, these aren't just temporary mood shifts, the mad and the angry are always there. but somehow, in my dreams, i know he's acting this way because he's sick, and for some reason, his illness has altered his personality.

this is nothing like real life. besides that my dad so rarely got mad or angry, no signs of illness existed until that very morning. we had no idea he was dying--no idea his heart was struggling as it was.

in my dreams, too, i know he's on the very verge of death. i know he could leave us at any moment, so i can't leave his side, no matter the strange alteration of his personality. i want to be around him. i want to cling to him, to get every last possible second with him that i can. i wake up every time. i never witness his death in my dreams, for which i'm thankful. but i'm not sure the constant waiting for it doesn't do more damage. it's like he's back mysteriously in our lives. i can't really figure out, in my dream, what happened, why he was gone in the first place, all i know is that i have a second chance to be with him, and i'm on the figurative edge of my seat in every dream, afraid that he's going to leave any second.

strange as it may sound, i'm grateful for these dreams. even though they're exhausting and sometimes heartbreaking, they're also small images of my dad. small chances to sort of be with him and remember him. i don't mind too much that he's not "himself," because even in my dreams, i can remember what he's really like, who he really was. i remember his smiles and his laughter, and i remember how he looked at me with that very special look that only daughters know. that look that says there's nothing in the world he wouldn't do for me. that look of sweet admiration. that look that says all he sees when he looks at me is the little girl he used to hold in his arms. i still know that look. i still remember those eyes. i remember his smell and the sound of his voice. i remember how he felt, where he was squishy, and where he was only bones. i remember where his tan line started on his arms, and which veins popped out that i liked to squish.

i remember it all. i remember it so well that it both hurts and delights; so well that most of the time i try not to remember it so i don't have to deal with the hurt part.

....

I feel strangely free tonight. Free from worry, free from grief, free from the constant weight that is life and the future. I don't know how. I don't know what's different tonight than any other night, but this is a precious sensation. No matter how long or short it may last, I must (and do) treasure it.

The most prominent freedom I'm feeling is from my constant worries about love. I want to be in it desperately, and on a normal evening, my heart hurts because no one I know is him. But tonight, i feel strangely free. He is there, or he is not, and either way I'm going to be okay.

This feels glorious.

two years.

TWO YEARS. the fact is glaring, and obvious, and brightly lit in front of me. i knew over Thanksgiving that then was the two-year mark of my last time seeing and speaking with my dad. hugging him. sitting next to him. joking with him. being lectured for not checking my oil in my car.
TWO YEARS. the fact screams at me, like it's trying to force me to acknowledge my dad is never coming back. he's not going to show up at church one day. he's not going to come home for lunch tomorrow. in five more years, he still won't be here. in 18 more years, i will have not seen my dad in 20 years...and someday, that reality will be in front of me.
TWO YEARS. and i wonder if my brother will call this time. he must care..? is he hurting, too? should i be calling him? but i'm here. with my mom. he should call. he should call more often than he does anyway. he should visit our home more often than twice a year, too. for all intents and purposes, he should need us as much as we need him. we're family and we lost someone dear two years ago, and we need each other.
two years. i can't believe it. multiples of years. an S on the end of year. i still think to myself, "how did we get here?" partially because i don't really see how we've made it this long without my dad, but also because i just don't know how we got here. how we're here and he's not. it doesn't make sense in my confused head. it doesn't make sense at all.
24 years. that's how long i knew my dad. i'm so grateful for those 24 years, and i wouldn't trade those years in for anything. but two years is not a long enough time to be only grateful, and not sad. no, i will be a combination of grateful and sad on this day, and 364 others for the rest of my life.
i miss you, dad.