moving on

I wish I knew how to make it stick. Or that I didn't care. Everything and everyone moves on. Or almost everyone.
None of this will matter. What matters is out of reach and needs nothing from me. If I get the joke, fine. If not, no loss. Move on. How do they do it? How was I doing it and why is it so easy to stop me?
What hurts the most is being mocked by the knowledge that even in those few sweet moments when I was doing it right, it wasn't that big a deal. The thing I lusted after without reservation, to be good and right and wise, that I was convinced that it couldn't be wrong to lust after, and it's no big deal when I get there. There's nothing better, plenty worse, and nothing is ever enough.
It is not okay to need people or desire anything at all. It is not okay. It leads nowhere. The joy only makes the pain more intolerable, and even writing that is terrifying because I still want the joy. I, I, I. What a whore.
I don't want to believe that I matter again unless it will last. I would kill not to ever care about mattering again.
I am and have been very bad. Please forgive me, but know that I cannot make myself better. No excuses.

life among wolves

the all-pervasive lie of the world casts gentleness as the worst kind of weakness - the kind that one who has it is stupid enough to let hang out in plain view.
I'm a fairly expert poser, but I know very well that the truth of oneself will always be revealed. I wish that caused me more joy than sorrow, but there it is. some are weaker than me, many stronger. whatever.
I can do damned little about that, but I can choose what I believe, even though I have been so hardwired to believe the lies that believing something else is the hardest work I have ever done.
the more I look back on some of the paths I yearned to follow for so much of my life, the less I believe I could have hacked it without being destroyed, or changed into a person that wasn't God's idea at all for me. that hurts like f*ck, but I have friends who have lived on those paths who believe in me more than I was ever able to. to feel like something that's indelibly tattooed on your soul is out of your reach because you're too gentle to embrace it feels like a slow death. there is nothing to do but trust One who knows better because He made me.
a large part of me still wants to be revealed as the embodiment of all the qualities I have lusted for and felt so incorrigibly bereft of, but if I make that my aim I will lose sight of what makes life worth living.
so I'm gentle, hesitant, quiet, apt to listen and watch before acting, quick to appreciate beauty, annoyingly open about the things that touch my heart, unfailingly surprised and dismayed every time life reminds me of a truth that should have long ago ceased to catch me off guard - that the world hates and fears that kind of person and is bent on destroying it, and no one is so divorced from the world that they are incapable of the same hate and fear - including me. but I get over it and start again, cuz I'm a hard f*ckin' target. and it's still a piss-poor idea to harm someone I love. to be gentle doesn't mean I'm incapable of brutality, only that I'm unwilling to be given over to or defined by it. those who are have lost the ability to see the end of the war or even hope for it. not going there.

catching up

Dear Aunt Esther,
I would certainly understand if you were a mite too distracted right now to pay much attention to this. You have a great deal of catching up to do, and I wouldn't begrudge you that for all the world.
You are catching up on life. That seems an odd thing to say at your funeral, but I know as solidly as I can claim to know anything that you are more alive now than I have ever been. Looking at what you have endured these last few years, that is a great comfort.
I am at a loss to even approach summing up what it meant to me to have you and Uncle Bill in my family. Your marriage brought two very different families together, and the very best attributes of both made your home the safe, welcoming place that it was. You always made us feel like you were as eager to see us every year as we were to be there. When you visited us up North, you brought the warmth and welcome of the South with you, and it always seemed to linger a bit after you'd left.
I remember coming down for Melissa's wedding less than two months after Uncle Bill died. I saw in you perhaps the most conflict I had ever seen on a human face - deep joy and deep grief fighting for first place. I remember feeling very sorry for you, but it wasn't until later that I saw how tremendously strong you had to have been to face that and prevail. You were hurting badly, but you still had much to give to all those present just by being there.
Your love and faith are a legacy that illness and loss and all manner of life's trials have only seasoned and strengthened, even as that same love and faith strengthen those who were blessed to call you friend or family. This world may take little notice of your accomplishments, but that means nothing to us. We know better.
I can't thank you enough for your love and example, nor can I thank God enough that you are now free of the sickness and sorrow that you knew all too well in this life. It hurts to see you go where we can't yet follow, but you now know better than any of us do that the reunion will be more than worth the hurt. As I said, you are catching up. With your God, your husband, with all you love and cherish. And you have eternity to do it. I don't know when I will join you, only that I will one day. Thanks be to God. I love you. And thanks to you and Uncle Bill for all the orange Push-Ups.

prayer

God have mercy on us.
I don't think I have the balls to face the prospect of seeing us through Your eyes.
You are love; are we so far gone that the only way to love us is to pull the plug?
We're pretty far gone; I know that much.
I'm not excited, I'm terrified.
I don't know what to do. Most of us aren't even looking to find out, and in that we are horribly wrong.
Nothing is too difficult for you, but some things may be too distasteful, and for that You cannot be blamed. I pray we aren't there yet.
You know what's best. That comforts and terrifies me. There's nothing here worth saving unless You say there is. I pray You can do so without denying Yourself.
In the name of Your Son Jesus Who spilled His blood to bring us to a much better place than the sewer we have made for ourselves, let it be according to Your will. Amen.

winners and losers

Winners and losers, turn the pages of my life
We're beggers and choosers, with all the struggles and the strife
I got no reason to turn my head and look the other way
We're good and we're evil, which one will I be today?

There's saints and sinners
Life's a gamble and you might lose
There's cowards and heroes
Both have been known how to break the rules
There's lovers and haters
The strong and the weak will all have their day
We're devils and angels
Which one will I be today?

[Chorus:] Are you happy now with all the choices you've made?
Are there times in life when you know you should've stayed?
Will you compromise and then realize the price is too much to pay?
Winners and losers, which one will you be today?

There's a a light and a dark side
Standing at the crossroads, there we'll meet
There's prophets and fools there
The lies and the truths will be at our feet
I got a reason to turn my head and look the other way
It's heaven and hell here, which one will I live today?

Which one will I be today?

- Social Distortion

where are your accusers?

I was sure that the only reason they stuck around was because they didn't know what kind of fuckup they were dealing with. Now I think they do, and they're still here. That hurts almost as bad as being alone, because I can't understand it. The most beautiful thing involving other humans that's ever happened to me, except perhaps marriage, and it's so alien to all I've ever been wired to believe that I'm locked out of it by my inability to grasp it.
I understand punishment, reprisal, reaping what one sows, the law of returns, call it what you like. I do not understand an economy where my most inexcusable defects do not mark me for contempt and rejection. What the hell's in here that's worth what one has to endure to get to it?
Someone please pick up a fuckin' rock so I can get a clue again. Oh God, please don't. Whatever. I don't know. I wish I had a brain. This heart shit is getting old.

exchange

1 Corinthians 15:35-49.
We try so hard to be immortal, invulnerable, to rise above the predations of a fallen world that beset us from the outside and betray us from within. God sent his beloved Son to assume the form of the only innocent man who ever lived for the purpose of being tortured to death, and He did it for no other reason than to cancel out the debt we could never pay. And he sought to cancel that debt because only then could He lavish on us what we so doggedly yet despairingly strive to secure for ourselves.
Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in honour and power. In seeking strength and honour we cling to the very things that keep us from them. Sincerely, perhaps, but still clinging. It is such a job to get to the point where we even realise that, and then there's choosing what to do with that realisation.
When I obtain something at great personal cost, I will defend and retain it relentlessly, even if it is miserably inadequate for its intended purpose - unless something better can be had. What God offers is not only vastly better, but free for the asking - or almost. It will cost me that which He seeks to replace. And that is terrifying when it has already cost so much. I can easily believe that what He offers is better - until faced with discarding what I have in favour of it. I have invested so much of myself in these things, and now He strolls in to toss them out? All they have cost me screams in protest - unless I take a good hard look at what His offer to me has cost Him. And when I can finally choke down the last of my shame, I find it a little easier to remember that He only seeks to toss those things to make room to give me Himself - and then what else could I possibly need? What have I ever accomplished by my fuming and fretting? Hasn't He prevailed in spite of all my efforts? Have my seemingly bottomless defects and ineptitude ever thwarted His plans for me of good and hope and a future?
The terror and the beauty of it is that I depend on Him even for the faith I need to let go, and the grace to cover my lack of it. The amazing thing is that He understands, that even having paid such a monstrous price for His gift to me, He sees my struggles and losses and what they have cost me - and He still cares. But only to the end of setting me free from them, of bringing me to the point where I value His sacrifice so immeasurably more than any paltry cost I could have paid. All the things I have fought for and invested in will only retain their value if they are lost in and to Him so He can raise them by the same power that raised Him from the dead - the very resurrection He would share freely with anyone willing to accept it, if only we can let ourselves die.
I pray He knows as He knows His own Self that this is what I want more than anything else to be true about me - that I who was dead in futility and weakness am now raised in His love and strength, that I have attained the adoption as His son for which He has predestined me, and that I reflect His glory in the unique manner for which He created me. The only thing worth fearing is failing to receive that indescribable gift from Him, and the only way I wish to be free from that fear is to receive it. And there is no one on this earth whom I would wish to miss out on that.