Who is the Kurtz at the end of my river?

It's funny. I haven't felt this alone in a very very long time, but it makes me want to drive people away far more than it makes me want to have people around me... although I still do, in a passive-aggressive way, if it makes any sense. I think my pride reflex and self-sufficiency has kicked into full gear. I catch myself wanting to call someone up and tell them it's my birthday and ask them to have dinner with me, but aborting at the last minute. Then I go to Applebee's by myself.

I don't think I ever pictured myself eating my birthday fries by myself on my 26th birthday. Even the waitress felt sorry for me. But I don't think I could bring myself to ask anybody to come along either. I am terrified that people will show love to me out of obligation. I hate obligation with a passion. And you know what? The one person here who would unreservedly show up at my party out of unconditional love for me... I try to push her away with all I've got. I try not to, but her love is unbearable. How did I get so screwed up.

My life is filled with so many unhappy regrets. It's only by faith that I have joy and hope in the life Christ has for me, but the days are strained with difficulty. It's not depression that I'm going through; been there, done that, and it's a whole different animal. I'm in new, unfamiliar territory here. And I need to quit whining... even though I'm hurting.

You know what part of it is? Even after 26 years, it still hurts me to be reminded of what a cold, heartless, selfish place our world is. The longing for Home is as strong as ever. What if heaven turns out to be so very different from what I've imagined it to be? Will I be disappointed in Eternity? God give me the grace to really see Truth and see past the lies.

If this were two years ago, I'd write about how much I wish Jesus would come back already. But right now, if the Christ were to return this very moment, I'm not sure He'd call me "good and faithful servant." After all, doesn't he say, "Away from me!" to all those who fail to truly love and obey Him, despite having been used by Him in the most amazing ways? I cannot trust my own traitor heart.

Spaciousness

You came to my rescue
And I wanna be where You are.

Happy Birthday

...to me. 26 is the new 25.

I'm tired and trying to pull up out of a stall. Please allow me to disappoint you further.

All the dreams you wish would go away

Jesus you are, you are
Everything I'm not
Everything that I want to be
Jesus you are, you are
Everything I've got
So finish what you started in me.

-----

A third of life is all gone away.
Here's hoping thing second third will have fewer wasted days.
Fewer excuses.
Fewer regrets.
Fewer sellouts.

I don't know how not to be lonely.

Who will be home for me?

26 years. Am I to be like Abraham, and find my home only in my tomb?

(Yes, my God is mighty to save.)

How Much More Can God's Heart Take?

I'm so angry at injustice.

He Watches the Skyline, She Gazes at Stars

Orange leaves
Float on fall whispers--
Tree dandruff.

The ocean
Refuses to budge--
Seasons change.

Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we had switched places 4 years ago? We parted ways and set out to find our place in this world, but I feel like I've lost part of myself in the process. You felt like I didn't go as far as I wanted to because you held me back, but what you didn't realize was that I was able to go as far as I did because you, my friend, was at my side. Sister, I would gladly see Indian Springs with you over the top without you.

Streams of Consciousness

I feel my God calling me, calling me. He says to me, "Shape up, get real with yourself. Is this really who you want to be?" And He does it all with love, but it's with love that is slow and torturous. Because, really, I am in love with Him, but in the way that makes me want to hurt Him for loving me, hurt Him so bad that He'll go away and never want to disturb me again. He does it by showing me brothers who are real with Him, alive with Him, suffer with Him, reminding me that life is better with Him because there simply is no life without Him. Yet there's a little part of me that wants to cuddle with Death...

And I am this little rock in the stream of time that stands still against the current as life passes all around me above me beneath me surrounds me until I am left behind and whittled into a pebble won't You pick me up and skip me across the surface of this life until I arrive at Destiny's doorstep.

Oh no You never let go through the calm and through the storm oh no You never let go in every high and every low oh no You never let go Lord you never let go of me.

Meditations on a Home Long Gone

My little dog waits for me at night
Somewhere out there, never howling
Not a twitch of whisker or wag of tail
No joyous leaping at my approach
She looks for me with eager eyes
That sparkle with forgiveness for sins long past
I was not there that calamitous day
(Yet was I not there in heart and in mind?)
I miss her so, my little dog
My friend on many lonesome nights
We still have so much left to share
We still have so much left to share.

A Land Where Strangers Smile at You

I heard about rain
that falls sideways
pounding against bedroom windows.
We don't get much rain in California.
Only asphalt, steel and glass
and the stench of personal ambition
rising up to an acid-stained heaven.
When I can't take it anymore, I
go to the beach
and baptize myself in the smell of the sea,
hoping to find absolution in ocean breezes
and to lose myself amidst the churning waves.
But this rain that falls is so different.
It creeps in between my bones, relentless
and forces me to confront the emptiness
my life is becoming.
"I have no mouth and I must scream,"
I used to say.
Now God has given me a mouth
and rain to cover my shame
washing the cracks in the window pane.

Before the Breaking of the World

I want to remember how I used to see the world.

Freedom Is Not Always Advisable

We're All Falling

"Autumn"
Rainer Maria Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if an orchard were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

So I'm sitting here in the type of coffee shop that has its air conditioning turned up much higher than necessary and its wholesale coffee lined up on the wall like ducks on a row, and I'm thinking that *now* would be the perfect time for a run-on sentence. "Burn your bra, break your grammatical conventions, set your inhibitions free!" appear to be the modus operandi for the moment, and why not? Not that I would know anything about burning bras, of course, but if one's whole existence feels confined to the foolish limitations of one's own actual experience, then one does crazy things to remind oneself that one's existence actually means something. Delving into the absurd seems to be the intellectual variation of slashing one's wrists to feel alive.

I'm tired of ontological loneliness.

This whole quarter-life crisis thing is pretty ridiculous, you know? Only fat, spoiled children like myself who don't have to bleed for the most basic needs have the luxury of longing for intimacy. I try to hide this fact from myself by making out my existential angst into so much more than it really is, but what it comes down to is that I'm incredibly lonely. I'm lonely for a place to belong to. I'm lonely for a place where I feel safe. I'm lonely for a place to rest my broken heart. I'm scared that if I ever find that place, it'll be stripped away from me. I feel an incredible sense of loss every time a good friend gets married or begins a new romantic relationship--not because the relationship is romantic, but because it's exclusive. I am threatened by exclusivity, because I fear my own exclusion. There was once a time when I embraced my exclusion, celebrated it, revelled in it, but I found that self-imposed exile is an IKEA showroom. It looks like a home and feels like a home, but when the lights turn off it is nothing more than a warehouse...

And here comes this God who says He wants to know me and be known by me and desires intimacy with me, and I do everything I can to push Him away, because I don't *feel* (and what are feelings worth anyway?) like He's what I want. (Note that I didn't say that God isn't what I need.) Why shouldn't I want Him? Is it because I feel that He can't give me what I ask for? Because I feel that He will ask more of me than I could possibly give?

It's because God, by virtue of who He is demands to be the center, and that's where I want to be.

If I'm honest, my "loneliness" is the result of desiring the world to revolve around me. When I set up such a world, I get sad because I find that everybody goes away--they don't want to play in my little charade. And only God remains, beckoning me to find another way. I know that if I do things God's way, I'll have everything I want and need. But, goddamnit, I LIKE the ashen ruins I built, because they're MINE. Better my ball of dust then all of Solomon's borrowed riches, right?

Lord, I am so wrong. I repent; give me the strength to truly repent.