Friday, September 29, 2006

That thing

They keep asking questions... blaming me for my feelings, making it my fault that I can't be involved. Why didn't you call? Why didn't you ask? Why didn't you do that thing?

Oh... that thing... why didn't you just say so... that thing that didn't work last time. I didn't do it because it didn't work. It hasn't worked all the times that we've tried it.

We believed in it to you know. It didn't last. It was philosophy and politics not policy and practice. Nothing came from it.

You got it off your chest, the baggage off your back and we picked it up and carried it home with us. We piled it up in the corner and resolved not to do it. Because we believed. We sat there and wondered about how great it would be if it worked.

And then? Then we stopped... we stopped talking about you, we stopped absently letting people feel not involved... we tried it. We watched. We watched as other people immediately went back to doing the same thing. We watched as people got left out. Not just any people...us.

We watched ourselves become the new thing to talk about, the new inconvenience. We wondered first what we'd done; then we wondered what we could do. We called and we talked, we explained, we were careful not to write things, say things, or do things and we became a part of the shadows and the silence.

No one missed us. Or if they didn't they never called, they never tried, they never explained. We were suddenly there like a coffee table and a chair, nothing needed from us, nothing expected from us, if we were gone people sat elsewere they found other places to set there things. We were just a prop...no longer part of the party but instead part of the decoration.

Parties are more people. They would think to invite us because we were more...not part... just filler for an empty room. We were a mere technicality, a statistic... no one talked to the statistic no one wondered what the technicality thought. We became someone else.

Abuse is something people notice but neglect we can look at neglect and say we never meant to cause it. We didn't know. Someone should have said something. But neglect it flies by blindly until there is nothing but a layer of dust to show that time has passed and it has been occuring all along.

Abandoned in the dust we lost our voice. We assumed that to love well would be to forgive and say nothing.

We became nothing... not sad or happy, not alive or dead we became lost...
and no one was looking to find us.

For a moment

September 8th I was married. Not September ninth which is the date the pastor wrote on the certificate when he mailed it in. September ninth is far different than the day before it. On my wedding day I was filled with excitement, panic and pepsi with ice while I nervously waited for the perfect hair and the perfect dress to be put on over my perfect makeup and my perfect shoes. The next day, I made my perfect marriage blessed with my imperfection. On the ninth breakfast was skipped for the ability to make a baby...an activity we'd been waiting for quite some time to partake in. Imperfect love, akward and new brought the morning to a bright start. Three days later on our honeymoon I was dizzy and sick but I brushed it off to being tired and cranky.

Finally a week later I resolve to the little pee test to find out if my dizzy spell was my body trying to tell me I was the carrier of the miracle form of an STD. Negative. Phew. Ok...


A week after that I'm not tender to the touch, hot all the time, sick and tired. I decide I must be crazy but I pull out the other little stick test and resolve that three minutes and $14.oo is a savings as opposed to waiting and wondering all the time. Positive.

Excited. Elated. Refreshed. Energized. I AM HAVING A BABY. I drive to Starbucks to tell the Hubby in the middle of the busiest shift of the day. He is excited, mildly shaky. We thought it would take longer but we are "all in" as my father says.

We plan. We tell three people. We decide to wait for some drama to blow over to tell the rest. We make it another week. I wake up "different". I can only describe different as feeling empty. By mid day it is over. I was pregnant for a week. A WEEK. Yet my body is racked with pain and doubt and my mind is plagued with wondering how many times my body will reject God's gifts.

I pray. We cry. He comforts. We resolve. But in the end we wonder...why are we alone. Why us, who have this great church, this great community, this great life we used to brag about now the kind of people who'd rather greive alone than deal with the days ahead knowing we asked for help from the kind of people who hold helping over you like a hammer.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Uneasy Peaceful Feeling

Have you ever stopped doing something for awhile for um...drama... reasons and then gone back to doing it? It's always amazing to me how ackward it is the first time you resume an activity. Any activity. I'm pretty sure that if you stopped breathing it would feel akward when you started again. Or if you stopped eating... how weird would that be to resume... chew...swallow repeat isn't exactly the most graceful of processes.

What baffles me about restarting something you left off is that as a human you desire things to be the same. You want the same thing you had before, but it will never be that. It's too late, too broken. There will always be that self inflicted trust issue of trying to remember what it was, what it could have been and then comparing it uselessly to what is.

It's all my fault you know. I prayed for patience. Everyone knows the only way the Lord can give you patience is by testing you. I should have seen that coming.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The First Time

The first time you write on a blog is a lot like the first time that you do anything. Although this is not my first blog I find trying to think of something to write slightly akward. Perhaps confidence in writing is something that you only have when you really don't need it. I'm pretty sure some of the most offensive and potentially life changing things I have written about have flowed out of my mind and through my fingers till the keyboard sounded like termites on studio speakers. But the simple things... oh they come the hardest.

This month is the first for so many things. My first (and only) marraige started this month. On the eigth of September I became someone's Mrs. It's so new still that I have to make a deliberate effort to sign my new last name and I struggle with the cursive J that I'm sure will come with ease and grace when I write my name eighty years from now.

Our first night of marraige filled with hope and doubt. The sudden realization that you're going to be a team for the rest of your life is an amazingly passionate thing. You talk about it so much leading up to your marraige, but that first time... well it's not what anyone can describe to you. It doesn't matter how many times you joke about stretching first, you're not going to remember that when it comes time to stretch your legs and give it a good old fashioned college try.

And then the little firsts... the first time I realized that people can't all be trusted the way I thought they could. The first time I discovered that having a new boss is much like riding a new bicycle. I have all the skills I need I just need to wait for it to feel less akward. The first time we had another couple over for dinner at our house. Sure people come here to eat a lot but not to "our" house...

My house no longer exists I live in it's walls but suddenly it is filled with so much more, more life, more hope, more laughter and less of other things... less chocolate because we ate it already, less sleep because we occupy each others waking hours so well and less doubt because although there are a lot of firsts...for the the first time... we've got someone else to keep us from worrying.