Fragile Heart- Fraying Around the Edges

For lack of an original thought, I will quote the ever world-wise words of the sunny pop-princess, Colbie Caillat and agree that "It's kind of tough getting older".

As time continues to march across my face and across the calendar, I can't ignore this knotting in my chest. This still small voice that seems to taunt me, nagging at the edges of my life, pulling at the unfinished threads that are being twisted in the wind, and asking me, "Is this it? What are you missing? Are you not looking hard enough? Not trying hard enough?"

I don't think the voice nagging me can necessarily be answered or hushed with a solid, tangible answer. I don't think it is as simple as solving equations to discover what this "something" is that I find subtracted from my life. It's an overwhelming sense of heaviness- a heaviness that I have deduced to call depravity.

But before I get all emo, and depress the rest of this blog into a thin line of "pity me, please", the depravity of my humanity isn't depression or sadness. It's a realistic understanding that life isn't heaven. It's just life.

And my life's continual sense of lacking will never be completely filled. That makes my heart a little heavy. Can I become momentarily satiated? Surely. Completely assuaged? Never.

My frailty, my tendency to fail, to slip, to trip and to fall is just as normal as breathing, laughing, loving- this hole that sometimes seems blacker than other days will always be. It is called imperfection.

The world is flooded with images of so-called perfection which enhances and increases the cavernous divide between myself and my intangible discontentment. It's a spiritual matter. I need God. He fills in the hole that I have crammed full of putty. A quick fix that didn't fix anything is now marred with flecks of dirt and grime, from foot traffic and clumsy behavior. He caps off my nervousness, he pops the pithiness of my bubbling white lies. He silences the nerves that cause me to jerk away, and to be a jerk.

The hard part about dealing with emotions in a practical way, is that emotions, feelings, premonitions, and wonderment can not be spit out of a gumball machine in round, shiny balls of matter of fact. There is no machine. Being a human that is both parts science and spirit, is a constant conflicting rendering. When I try to compose the exaction of what my feelings compute, what they mean in real time and space, it just comes out sounding like a humming bird. Too fast to understand, and too monotone to translate.

This weekend was a strange one. The weather was nice, I felt relaxed and I had a normal time. Hanging out with friends, being with my husband- drinking coffee and eating salsa and chips-, it was great. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could have prepared me for my emotional crash.

But some times the movie set of all it all, just falls down, and I see the stage for what it is. A facade. Dust covered, and dark. My fantasies and selfish ambition, is just putty in the hole.

The real problem lies deeper. Inside.

This is a little more personal than I like to share, especially on a blog- but I think it is necessary for me to just be honest. For me. I slept on the couch this weekend for the first time in my marriage.

There was no huge fight, there was no devastating problem, there was just a trillion little paper cuts that added up to a huge gaping wound.

We talked it out, but not until the morning after. We spent three hours discussing some things we would like to change about how we interact, who we interact with, and how we spend our time. It was very necessary but arduous.

When you move thousands of miles away from your friends and family and are trying to decipher who you are as individuals and who you are as a couple, it can result in some wear and tear. And without the buffer of friends and family, you are kind of standing naked in the wind, trying to figure it all out. Trial and Eros, troubleshooting a clay pigeon.

Which is good. That kind of figuring produces growth not just facts.

But I still have a little splinter in my heart, and not because I don't think my husband and I came to an understanding, and worked some stuff out, but because I know that this is just the beginning of a life time of stumbling through the dark, trying to define spiritual pain in a physical world.

I am grateful for grace. I am grateful for slits of sunlight in a boarded up room. I am looking forward to the ever after, days on end with sparkling lemonade and uncovered truth that carries no sting.

Until then, I will keep marching on. Love conquers all, however I am beginning to understand it's not an instantaneous defeat. Its a continuous time line of plotted victories and defeat, a wearing down of your defensive lines and a blurring of battle and peace.

I am blessed to have a husband like I do. I am saved and kept.

But we all have to guard our hearts, since they are so fragile. We all have to hem ourselves in, since just a single fray can make it all come undone.

"And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars and more like
Character" ~ Sara Groves