I sit here in my decorated apartment, wrapped up in a gray blanket and wet hair. There's an overcast sky coming in through the blinds, and it feels wrong not to write. The only exercises I'll do today are the tiny crunches that let me reach across the table until the cold brew's all gone. I'm eating day-old Thai food and listening to Johnnyswim, because this new album is almost as good as Christmas. We have lights strewn about and there's an empty space in the corner for where our tree will go. I haven't worn my favorite jeans in weeks, so I'll do some laundry when I feel like it. Truthfully, I need an oil change, but I just really want a wreath for the door and more garland for the mantle. I think you and I both know which one wins this Sunday battle. It'd be normal for me to feel guilty about a day like this one, underwhelmed and begging for a productive tomorrow, but not today.

Several of my friends lately have asked about my heart, things that I'm learning, the hard and the good of a new marriage. (By the way - get you friends like these. Not just anyone will care to delve into those cracks, unsure of what they might find but digging it up and carrying it on anyway). Their questions have stretched me out thin and given me room to process real and true answers to them, all of which sing to the tune of contentment and make me squirm. Is it possible to seriously search your heart and come up content? The rest of the world is spinning but not you this time. Somewhere across my line of living, I've positioned my circumstances as a wide open and torn up book, shouting out my brokenness, propping myself up against authenticity, and letting my heart ache when it needs to. There's no use in tucking it away as a secret, because if only one person relates to my present struggle, well, then that's enough for me to sleep with.

I think as I've gotten older and seen more of the world and been disappointed by many, I've noticed that favor is scattered and sprinkled like rain in a drought and that miracles still happen but mainly that pain will always be relevant until we're redeemed in full. Heroes can't hang the moon. Living costs a lot of money. Dogs die and friends get sick and most of the time even your prayers won't stop it. I'm not surprised when we suffer and I believe we should share about it. Somehow two stories of similar hurt equal one of a promised hope, and at all times, I want to be available in offering mine up for a seeking match.

Except what if all of a sudden you're a wife with a forehead stained in kisses and a place to spend Thanksgiving and leftovers in the fridge and a still, quiet house and your biggest fight of the week is between an oil change or holiday decorations? That feels like cheating, like I've abandoned my empathy post for safety and nice things. What will I tell the one who resents her singleness or the one whose family's a wreck or the one that's killing herself to meet the needs of her husband and hates to cook. I go around, scouring my life that is good in hopes of finding the wild card that'll knock it all down and let me relate again. I understand now how messed up that sounds, relating for relatability's sake and dismissing blessing in the meantime.

I used to genuinely have trouble coming up with joy when others were happy. I wore their tears when they wept, but when it was finally time to rejoice, I neglected their dancing like I just hadn't seen it. Arms crossed, it seems my heart had atrophied under the envy of when-will-that-be-me. Selfish and scared of being the only one left on earth bearing the burden of hurt. Why don't you just help me carry it. Celebration will come the day that people stop losing their jobs and burying their children and when everyone's nice and when pigs fly. I'll just be over here idolizing pain while you delight in the Lord and his grace. Ouch.

I'd pride myself on a full schedule because I didn't have a purpose and make it quick, because everyone else is finding theirs. A cute planner busting at the seams with purpose! The best at work. Straight A's until I die. Extra time for Ryan. Friends and more friends and you be my friend. Serving at church. Attending church. Family thrown in there somewhere. And a gold star beside each one because all of this is an introvert's worst nightmare. If we're being honest - and what's the point of being anything but - I don't think I knew that seasons of rest and retreat really happened for people, and it was almost irresponsible to let yourself go there. Periods of time (longer than a day) reserved for other things. Things not frantically gathered from shelves to be useful, but ones that by their very nature bear fruit. Resting. Worshipping. Going into town for coffee. Seeing leaves fall and letting it make your day. Eating dinner in the living room. Watching tv with your spouse. Checking the mail. Finding time to write. Drinking beer from a frosty glass. Tending to a new home. Waking up late and existing. "Not void of hard things but freed up for holy ones to emerge," as I've said before.

I'm sorry if you've danced and I've pinned you as a fraud. I'm sorry that I've mistaken contentment for complacency and crowned busyness as Lord of my time and energy. I'm sorry for all those times I forgot how to listen because I was trying my hardest to relate and understand. I'm sorry if I haven't indulged in the fullness of your gifts and company because I was distracted by the permanence of pain.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Bless you, Oscar Wilde, but as for me and this unexpected discipline of Sabbath: We plan to continue on existing. To create until we're finished. To keep being satisfied and to accept good gifts. To survive and let the days come, knowing that there will be more weeping and work to be done. To avoid getting caught up in the hullabaloo of living and doing so much that we miss the art of being. People don't need us to be experienced in the hardness to fix them. They need us to exist as the Holy Spirit (the only one who relates) passes through and becomes flesh. After all, we're only vessels and I think it's about time we do our jobs and just be.

Sunday was one of those days that was good until it just wasn't. I hope you know what I'm talking about here. It happens sometimes. We woke up, took our time getting ready, discussed Halloween costume ideas, and went into town for a coffee and toast breakfast. They made my latte hot instead of iced like I had asked, but it was fine. Was it fine? Yeah -- it was fine. We sat on a bench and decided what to do next and he kept talking but I didn't have anything to say back. "I think I want to go home." Ryan was headed into work later, and I'd be by myself until the night, and there was a list of things that I would either do or wouldn't do, but I was erring on the side of nothing. Dishes, laundry, emails, grocery shopping, 'thank you' letters. But probably nothing.

I wanted to spend time before he left, but I laid down instead because I knew I had started to derail. Once the train starts, it doesn't stop until the wheels are off and the smoke's overcome it. The sheets felt my weeping and then I remembered that nothing was the matter. I went to the couch, and he looked at me, knowing and giving me permission to not know. I told him that I was just feeling sad today and we turned on a movie that let me be sad.

There's this pendulum in me that swings between apathy and irritability, blankness or irrational worry, and it shows up at random and it knocks me about. It's mid-October and I wore a sweater and none of the leaves have changed and now I'm sweating and so help me God. It starts in my stomach and climbs to my chest and it usually comes out as an army of tears with no place else to go. I used to think that it was bipolar or something on the spectrum, and I used to pray that a doctor or therapist might give it a label so that all along it wasn't me - it was my disorder. But alas, it's just me and maybe it's you or maybe it isn't. When I'm not stuck in bed and when I'm not afraid that Ryan might have cancer and leave me here and when my days aren't ruined because our bread went bad, I'm still. I make time to write and I hear the Lord speak as He anchors each twinge of disappointment or empty feeling to Himself - something that doesn't depend on death or the changing seasons.

I was slowing down, in motion, but decelerating back to equilibrium. Ryan kissed me goodbye, and I sat alone in a quieter-than-normal apartment, mustering up a motivation to fold the clothes. I got a text from a friend shortly after telling me that she had an extra ticket to the fair and that she wanted me to come. I hadn't been to the fair this year, and it was the last day. I really love the fair - it's kind of like a sister to the circus and a good enough excuse to exchange coupons for food that's not acceptable to eat any other day of the year. Heart-attacks hidden beneath powdered sugar and the camaraderie that weaves its way between strangers who're all rooting for a good ferris wheel.

If nothing else, this invitation felt like a piece of sunshine on a day like today, and I was glad for it. I hurried to the bathroom to wish away my splotchy makeup, and as I looked in the dirty mirror that needed cleaning, it hit me. You were the last pick. I turned away and felt my knees get weak. They had likely gone down the list of available friends and after each of them had declined, they shrugged and stiffly held out this ticket that didn't belong to me. I had joyfully accepted, twirling the ticket high in the air, and what a fool I'd been to do that. I wasn't even a choice.

Well, I'm super busy anyways, and they're right. Someone else would have been a better fit. But honestly, screw them because I'll never live as a plan B, C, D. I was in the middle of some response explaining that a huge thing had just come up and how I wouldn't be able to make it after all. I was growing angrier and more insufficient. Before I had gathered enough momentum to start swinging, being pulled back and released by Bitterness and it's accomplice, Self-reproach, I felt a tug - a conviction that held me to the middle. I was experiencing a divine protection at both sides from One who's had practice in calming storms and splitting seas. He led me through and replayed similar conversations that I had fabricated about Him not long before, putting words in His mouth that fix like oil and water. Because the heart of Jesus and No, not you aren't seen together. I tell Him often how he has the wrong girl and then I grit my teeth because he probably chose me last.

. . .

We're in the middle of a series at church right now called Better, and we're finding that living an open-handed and generous life leads to a life of abundance and outpour. We've talked a lot about the next generation and the reason it's a core value of ours to invest in the ones coming after us. About how Millennials and anyone else clumped into the "do-er" crowd places exponentially higher a value on actions than on words. I think it's the reason there are so many of us burned out on religion and politics and other institutions who preach at the pulpit and leave us waiting on the practice. We crave follow-through but we haven't been taught how.

I've grown into a cynic's shoes, walking around just waiting for it all to come apart and not surprised when it does. Toby said something last night that touched on a growing spirit of skepticism in a young generation. He offered one better and said: "Let's be a people that are guilty of believing too much." And in every part of my flesh, that sentence tells me to run. Trusting too much that the Lord might actually do what He says he'll do has the potential to find me as a fool, waving my ticket high in the sky, accepting an invitation from one who may or may not have wanted me in the first place. But there He is, time and time again, parting the waters on my behalf and making me see straight through. Evidence of One who didn't blink when he chose me.

He's teaching me that there are prettier and smarter and more qualified candidates but that He only wants me for my job. He's letting me lose the battle of firsts to show me that being chosen is enough. He's good at disrupting my doubt and correcting my steps in the direction of Yes, you. And I've found that there's nothing quite as sanctifying as backing down from the greatest to take part in It's work. 

"It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did this on his own, with no help from us. Then he picked us up and set us down in the highest heaven in company with Jesus. 

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish - we don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing. No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and the saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing." Ephesians 2:1-10 (MSG)