Let's Not Make Our Beds in This Dim Light

I suppose there's no use in thinking about the romantic idea that halfway happened and then left and what you could have done to save it, but I was thinking yesterday that how'd I have to go and tarnish a perfectly well-intended afternoon. Those are the worst ones to ruin, aren't they? Seventy-something degrees, maybe just eighty. You started out as Summer Finn, (from 500 Days of Summer) only you're the EXPECTATIONS version who's sexy and carefree and believes in love. You aren't bothered by fear and your favorite place is a rooftop at night and almost everything on earth interests you. You tie ribbons in your hair and play "penis" in the park and ride a bicycle when you could just drive a car. You have a different dress for each day times two and you're glad that Tom's still intrigued by you.

Neither of us have to work and on Mondays the rest of the world usually does - so we drive through an empty highway, scour a city map to find the most suitable spots for our dog, go right up to the taco counter with no line, make excuses for daytime dessert and, like all kids who should have known better, there's really nothing that could soil this one.

Ryan had a thing for work at his place in Ft. Worth, so we were making a day of it like how we do sometimes to kill two birds with one stone. He'd go for about an hour or so - hour and a half - and I'd sit outside of the juice bar next door with our pup until lunch. I had forgotten my laptop and my book as we rushed out of the house this morning, but I had a phone and a charger and I guess if I didn't have those, I'd sit at a two-top and have to talk to people like the olden days and time would go slower. I tied Rascal's leash to the railing so that I could use the restroom inside. I peeped my head around the corner a last time just to make sure he was settling alright, and through the window, I watched my dog climb over the ledge - one paw after another - and onto the street where trucks come to load. I wasn't worried about him getting hit because he was still connected, but I rushed over and hoped he hadn't managed to hang himself in front of a vegan juicery. I'd just have to hold it, I thought.

I had become a loiterer on the patio furniture of this strip center with a dog that looks mangy and a water bottle that I couldn't drink right now, and I was waiting to be busted by every person that walked by. I'd get up and purchase something and maybe take a piss if my pet could just handle it for two minutes. I had to have been visibly more helpless than I felt, because an employee with a visor came out to my neon green table and asked if he needed a bowl of water. But what about me? Sure, I said, and then proceeded to explain my situation and realized that I'd never had to justify my lurking anywhere before this moment. A few minutes later and an act of God at work, I would hurry in to the multi-gender toilet while a teenage boy with shaggy hair and a tie-dye shirt stroked my dog. I viciously thanked the man for having to break from work to babysit a cute animal, paid him in exact change for the most popular green drink on their menu and gave him an extra five for solving all of my problems.

How many minutes had it been? An hour? Five? I was increasingly hungry and began counting the times that people asked his name. "It's Rascal." And I would watch as their eyes widened - "Oh, that fits him perfectly!" Six of them said it.

It wasn't my husband's fault, of course. I had signed up to do this and knew exactly what I was in for. But we don't always feel the way we planned to. In fact, how we plan to feel is often a grand illusion of our more sanctified selves that we haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting. I guess sanctification does us that way - chasing the carrot on a stick until we're at a dead sprint towards the One thing that matters but being upset and betrayed and lonely in the meantime. So we feel how we feel and an hour thirty hit, and I resented every second after that. Not because I needed to eat or had things to do but because the snake crawled up my back and told me that I may as well be buried. Instead of a dog in my lap, I imagined kids and Ryan not being there. I thought about him taking the car and heading off to somewhere better while I sat waiting until dark, holding the leash in front of the juice bar. Patrons came and left like the first few bouts of tears that day, anxious ones that would last until bedtime.

He came to find me after his class (which lasted only a quarter or half past what he had predicted) and poor thing was about to know the wrath of an abandoned girl who needed someone other than the devil to yell at. I told him that he just left us here and that I can't do this by myself. I throw in some choice words to prop myself up and then start churning the wheel over again, thinking about the reasons he would have been right in forsaking me at my stoop. I blot my glassy eyes in the prettiest bathroom I've ever seen and wonder if my tear ducts hate me for being overworked and underpaid. We share some silence and sorry's over a bowl of good guacamole and feed our dog Mexican rice under the table. He knows that today was less about him and entirely about a wounded wife who was deceived by a coward, the one that was specifically and fervently told to stay out of it.

. . .

Maybe you're single or widowed or orphaned or gay and you feel how you feel, and the Lord's working in you a promise that seems a lot like neglect. I'm married now and my head's bobbing faster amongst a jumping crowd to be picked. He committed his life to me, and I instantly became a walking liability, ashamed of what I bring to the table and susceptible to hurt that may or may not ever come. The missing piece that people tell you might quench your desert heart comes around and just exposes it in full.

And with companionship, you still feel empty. A second income still isn't enough. With sex, you're still undesirable. With a home, you still find yourself longing for one. And the best life you've ever had still leaves room for the fear of it going away. And running's hard, but I can feel it taking me somewhere good, one meltdown after another. So, let me run with you, friends - we'll keep at it. Because soon our feet will stop and the stick will fall and the skin that once gave into cowardly snakes will have shed. And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.