on paper i am doing ok, i have spent a week-and-a-half back at work, and its going really well. i love my job, it interests and excites me, and to be honest most of the working day, i still find myself thinking -i can't believe i get to do this for a living-
on paper i seem to have worked out the crying to an average of about twice a week. which sometimes strikes me as scandalous, like i ought to be crying everyday still....but really i know that it is ok.
on paper i have had a very relaxing weekend, tv, food, home, drinks in the evening (but not too many), me-time, people-time, midsomer murders, radio four, coffee and rain.....but in actual fact i do not feel very relaxed.
this is largely because today is, well, -on paper-, the paper (ie one year) anniversary of the wedding of nick and ang, my lovely brother and his lovely wife. at whose wedding reception i spent glad, happy, nervy and memorable time, more or less all of the party, with the boy.....after about seven years of not seeing him....and so today i am thinking, huh......how different it could all have been had i set my cap at another. had he not made eyes at me, had we not snuck out for cigarettes in-between the dinner-courses, has he not looked so lovely in his suit, had......well, had nothing happened.
and in fact as you know, nothing did happen....we just spent the day and evening hanging out. its midnight now. at midnight he came and told me he had to go. his lift was leaving. and i was devo. my night kind of ended. i mean, it didn't, the rest of us went in our bridesmaid dresses and suits to the pub and stayed out til four am. but when me and emily got home to my house and she stayed in my room with me i could not sleep for talking about him. she listened and made all the nice responses you want one of your best friends to make when they've seen you with a boy and you're trying to figure out if he might actually like you...
on paper: a piece of green paper that has been on my wall for several years, it has a picture of a heart, drawn hastily with a black thick pencil. and the words
rend your heart
risk your heart
guard your heart
when i wrote it three years ago i knew that this was where god was calling me, towards risky love; to all-out extravagant love; to brave and nerve-wracking and terrifying love....(the risking)...and to the bearing, the mourning, the sacrifice and surrender of love....(the rending)...and to the caution and preservation of love, where the well-spring is surrounded and covered and maintained...(the guarding...)
the latter is where i now find myself, guarding my heart, i hope not in a scared, closed, hard way, but in a hopefully, sensibly responsive way. i am trying to listen to my own needs and respond to them. its difficult when i had finally got to the point of needing him. of allowing that fragility in myself, that openness. and i'm kind of left with it now. i need you, now. as i did before, but differently...i need your phone-calls, your emails, your prayers....and i need jesus. i haven't quite figured out how to tell him that, yet, but i'm pretty sure he knows. and i have (not just on paper) known the reality of his response to my need of him more in the last seven weeks than ever before. what a gem.
