Hey You, It’s Me Talking to Me Talking to You

Today I feel like a dragonfly girl, freshly ruptured from aquatic larvae, into the brackish waters where two rivers merge, one salt, one fresh. I ask myself and God, who am I really? What do I most desire?

My mind flits to the memory of attending a concert featuring a Lynard Skynard cover band. The original band was lost in a plane crash. I wonder if fear of exposure pushed the musicians to climb outside of themselves and into adopting behaviors of the deceased, like the lead singer appearing barefoot to perform in a dry ice fog, enhancing the crowd’s suspension of reality as he sings familiar tunes.

Where do I go, what do I do, when I’m too afraid to be myself?

I have abused many substances. But the most corrosive poison to my soul, the sickly-sweet lie flowing from the beautiful side of evil, is the belief that I can staunch another’s gnawing hunger that only the Bread of Life can assuage and the deep thirst that only the Living Water can slake.

I recall Oprah interviewing a woman who walked the Pacific Coast Trail, ascending heights and depths, declaring victory because she met the perfect man and had all her brokenness mended in the glue of “romantic ardor.”

I want a restorative marriage of friendship, passion, and mutual accountability. I also know that singlehood does not equate to brokenness. Women and men are both called to coherency and obedience to God without shackling each other to the altar of carousal-like expectations and demanding each other play god.

Navigating relationships can be extraordinarily difficult. Feigning marital bliss or ignoring hurts within a friendship—staying silent about my disappointments—feels like a noose at my throat, a hook through my lip, or being pummeled with stones.

Contemplating how to maneuver a rift in a relationship requires courage, strength, and time. Yet working through those rifts brings me face-to-face with myself. As I sort through my hurts, expectations, fears, and responses, I come to know myself more honestly.

Spending time on what I imagine the other is thinking or how they might react is like descending into an unexplored mine and makes for dangerous spelunking. It is, in essence, a distraction and zaps strength. No combination of rope, harnesses, or pulleys ensures a safe trek down and out.

It can be tempting to write a letter or email to address a fracture. But without the nuance of tone, words on a page or in a text may confuse. After all, they’re merely little squiggles, ordered by paragraphs, and softened or emphasized by white spaces. They are interpreted through the other’s veil of experiences. So I know I must talk to them in person.

But to figure out and organize my thoughts, I've found it’s best for me to write out what I want to say. I want my words to arrive like a poem, not a diatribe.

It takes real effort for me to get past fear-induced abstraction to a place where my thoughts are clear and winsome. But when I do, I review the words I have written, then read them aloud—first to God, then to a friend, someone who gains or loses nothing in the outcome. Owning my own thoughts and motivations is transformative work. After being encouraged by their understanding, I’m able to go to the one with whom I am at odds in my bid to reconcile.

As I read my words to them, my eyes often glide from the page to their eyes, gauging their attention and comprehension. If I detect the glaze of distraction, I am tempted to stop reading. It takes great courage to continue rather than retreat inward.

I've taken a rabbit trail, let me return to the questions at hand.

God, who am I, really?

What do I most desire?

Which thoughts am I to care less about, which ones matter most to You, the One who knows all and sees from outside the galaxy of time?

What is mine to do today and what is a convenient distraction to evade the rigors of truth-telling and coming face to face with what only God can control?

Life is happening. Let me respond accordingly.

Let me cry. Or laugh. Or applaud. Change my mind. Or be strengthened by as I persevere with the little I know with renewed faith that God knows what is coming down the pike and is preparing the way.

I glide from sun to shadow along banks carved by nail-scarred hands, resting on the rock of Christ’s eternal absolution.

As I say please and thank you to truth, the constriction eases in my throat.

I swallow yes to it is finished. The hook slips off my lip.

I say no to you must earn it. The pummeling stones still.