(3) Home.

When a smile grows out

of odd-placed questions

and safe but stretched

boundaries...

I think you've found home

Paintings to be hung

an old bag tossed

onto an office couch 

familiar laughter

Your hair is growing out

shirts smell like shirts

I'm still singing John Mayer

& reading poetry

New pens & spelling errors

Home. 

Home. 

Home. 

(2) The Beyonce/Jay-Z Range

Disappointment,

I rechristen you

Absence

Whether or not you make my heart

grow fonder

is none of your concern

(1) Island

It is a sick & twisted thing 

Not knowing who

(& where)

you are

Everything aches & arches

These cycles of my

physical self...

They don't make it easier

Every inch of me hungry

Every night lonely

Every prayer feverish--

hoping God will keep me sane,

& whole

Maybe arranged marriage,

blind dates, old systems,

aren't all bad

At least then I'd know you

And could build my life

on making you happy

My heart is deep as space

but clear as a glassy creek

If I could just dream of you

Hear comfort in the words you speak

That your lips 

could caress my name--

Maybe it would quench the burning 

& stave off the doubt

How long will I be stranded?

Or should I make a home

of this island

& decorate it with shells?

Jumble Heart, Tangled Head

How absurd to fear something fictitious? There's nothing there. There's nothing there. 

Sometimes the darkness still brings fear flitting through my chest. Not of the darkness itself because the quiet light of the night suits my eyes but of the things that show up to haunt me when I am aching to forget. 

The images and sounds that comprise my nap time nightmares or memories I would rather not relive...both keep trying to enter my sleep deprived body. 

Then I remind myself that Jordan blessed this house. He walked through each room with Becca, and he prayed. I know that God listened to Jordan's prayer, and I believe in God's protection over this place and those who live here. 

So why does something in me still scream in this?

Why am I still reliving old wounds? The death of my best friend, a man I loved and believed in walking out on me, images from things I've seen or books I've read (real and fictitious happenings), feelings of loss...

I want this gone. I need this gone. So many weeks now and still I can't sleep. What is haunting me?

Why am I feeling guilt over someone else's life choices? 

I still can't comprehend how my heart still feels surges of loyalty and fierce need to protect a man whose heart is not mine to fight for. He made his choice. During the day, I make progress, and I see growth in my heart moving forward. 

But the dreams have started again. 

I lose him in my dreams. He struggles outside my reach. He's broken and hurting, and I wake up only remembering that nothing was right and uneasy. I worry in these fevered moments that maybe it's not just a dream. 

I wish my heart could understand what my head knows, but then I think...maybe that needs to be flipped around and it is my head that needs to learn from my heart. 

Whichever, whatever...

God, guard my dreams. I just wish I could either remember them and understand them or end them once and for all. 

Weakness

It's been a week and a half since I came home from FUEL, but, as always, the affect lingers. 

There's a good chance that in the next few months, preferably after my niece is born, I will be moving to SC. 

Years ago, when I was in high school, I use to dream about picking up and moving to SC even though it was a place I'd never been. I'd heard stories about how beautiful it was for years from people who had family there of frequently visited, and over that time I developed a love and longing for this place I'd never been (not entirely unlike my feelings for Italy or Bali either). 

South Carolina has always been my hopeful dream. It was the home Nikky and I planned to move to after we'd decided we were done with college I still had never been there, and I was moving on faith that Nikky's love for the place, combined with my own dreams, would be enough of a reason to move. 

Those dreams never came to fruition because I decided to go back to school and Nikky met the man of her dreams. During my return to school, I did finally go to SC, and fell deeply in love with the state and the people I met there. I fell hard for a boy in SC, but when he chose someone else I let go of all my dreams for the state. 

But God likes to change my course, my plans, my heart. 

I am weak. I am worried. I am wonderful. 

God knows that I am still healing from having my heart broken, still healing from broken dreams, still doubting myself, still feeling confused. He knows my weaknesses and my fears. He knows me. 

God is filling in my blank spots, my cracks, scars, all of it. He's covering me with grace, calling me his own, and showing me love each day. 

Even more amazing? He's giving me a new dream, or rather, refurbishing an old one. 

I will move to SC. I will face fears that I won't fit in, won't be enough (or will be too much), and that I won't be able to contribute. I know that in these weaknesses He will shine through. 

I just have to remember 2 Corinthians 5:7, "for we walk by faith, not by sight," and know that God's got this. No matter what.