And my heart goes dark.
It isn't an instant switch. There is no flash of light or circus of combustion, it is just a steady fade. A hand woven basket made of a thousand shades of gray is slowly coming unraveled by the hands of idleness.
My day to day has become a slow flicker to faint. I can't stomach it. I am like a bowling ball rolling down an alley with 10 foot bumpers.
Everything is so safe. Predictable. Silently screaming that I am missing it. I am missing the great call. I am missing the big idea, by way of apathy.
I was curled up in the bed the other day with L'Engle's Circle of Quiet Vol. I, and I have to say I couldn't read it. I couldn't finish the chapter. Her words were so vibrant, her accurate painting of a life lived outside of concrete walls was one that was full of life giving blood- the type that flows from pricking your finger on the brambles that surround the rose.
You risk. You find. You reach out. You hurt. You heal. You live. You feel alive.
These days it is hard for me to listen to really good music. My heart swells within me, and I feel like my imagination may burst out of my body floating alongside the major lifts reminding me that there is more to life than the clicking of keyboards and the smell of stale coffee.
The choice is mine. I do not have to remain in purgatory. I do for a dollar. So what does that make me? Easily sold, I suppose. Much like trading in a birthright for a bowl of soup.
I have prayed for change more than I have prayed for anything in my life, and what I am finding is that things are more the same now than they have ever been. Why does prayer seem to promote the very thing you don't want to go through?
The only conclusion I can come to is to prove that I am not in control.
Prayer isn't a Christmas list, it's a vendetta.
A feud that begins between what I want and what God gives me. Right now I want change. Maybe I should start praying for pain, solitude, surrender, suffocation, and for my soul to be emptied of all of the beauty it wants to create. Perhaps my heart will actually render itself useful.
Maybe I will stumble upon the answer to that echoing sonnet, "what am I doing on this earth"?
It sounds so ridiculous and over dramatic, but that's the ultimate question, isn't it? What did you have in mind for me? When you created me, what was the plan? Was I just a blank canvas to fill space, or was I meant to be a bucket full of paint?
My pastor said something interesting that I haven't been able to get off my mind. He said that in today's world we have all kinds of names for ancient problems. We call envy and coveting, marketing and publicity.
Ouch.
I am a part of the problem. I am promoting the Emperor's Clothes and I know it. I am selling naked emptiness. I am telling people to buy something they don't need. I love books, and the written word, but not everyone's ideas are worth reading.
Not even my own. This shoe doesn't fit. The stage that I find myself on, isn't the role I want. I am going to have to call the curtain. If I don't the thorns will get the best of me and bleed all of my integrity and imagination dry.
The silver lining, is that among the thorns there is hope. Where there is a thorn, there is life waiting to be disturbed. A beauty awaiting the conflict. A warrior waiting to fight. A heart awaiting the break.
Lord, please disturb my life.
If for no other reason than to break this heart into understanding your plan.
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