No Better Place

I want to say something and I'm not sure what it is. When this happens I write until it comes out; it's worked before, so I'll give it a shot here.

Whether home at school or home at home, one thing is becoming clearer and clearer as I get older:
I am not Home yet, not of this world, not meant to stay here.
There is a part of my heart that hurts when I think about it, but it is a hurt that I cannot and must not assuage.
I want to live my life so that I can look back from Home and say, "That was a good ride."

There's a lot that I want with this Life. It's a precious, sacred thing, and I try hard to appreciate it. Life comes from God, the natural result of the immensity of Love that He is. Such a Love cannot but cause new life to spring into being, for Love is of all other things creative. I want to fall in love, get married, have kids, go, do, be, work, walk, run, think, fly.
But I do not wish to forget why I am here.
I am here to do as He commands.
I am here to take the Love that created me, that created all of us, and hold it out with both hands to a world that has already rejected it.
It sounds...futile. It sounds like it will be painful. But I am finding that things that are worthwhile tend to bring pain with them, at least for a time. The flesh tends to cringe at the thought of the natural consequences that come with Being His. I think though that I am done listening to the flesh.

This is an excerpt from my journal, back in March:
"Let me be an invisible conduit, an unseen vessel for You....Let my name be coupled with Yours; let the two be inseparable. Let me be immersed, utterly submerged, in You....May the only impression I leave be one of You: make me invisible...
If I am extinguished, so be it. They do not notice the wick, only the flame."

I can't wait to get Home. Come with me. There's room.

I Don't Care if This is a Stupid Reason

Everytime I hit a dry spot, everytime I start to wonder if I can keep going, He goes and does something that from this vantage point looks nothing short of spectacular.

Like this.

There's this little boy I've been praying for. A friend's nephew. Born eight weeks premature with a defective heart. Put, as a last resort, on a machine that pumps the blood throughout the body so that the weak heart chambers need not try to maintain blood pressure. A machine that at the most is supposed to keep its patient alive for two weeks.
This little boy was on it for four weeks.
It got so that I dreaded hearing from my friend. It's not a reaction I'm proud of, but it's one I'm prone to, as a human who struggles at times with what I see as compared to what I know. I kept praying. At times it was the formulaic prayer of one who prays from a sense of duty, the kind of prayer that you have to choke past the boulder in your throat because part of you is screaming accusations at the other part of you (accusations that you do your best to ignore but which sound and awful lot like "hypocrite", "doubter", and "faithless"). And then there were the prayers that were borne of a quiet, desperate trust in the Creator of that tiny, weak heart. Sometimes I couldn't tell the difference.
I dreaded hearing from him. There was a battle raging internally. I knew he was past some point of recovery. I knew he had been on the machine for too long. I knew it.
I knew God could heal him. I knew I believed for a reason. I knew that whatever happened, God would still be sovereign. I knew it. So some days I prayed. Somedays, I tried very hard not to think about it.
The other day I got this call from my friend.
The baby got a heart.
After hanging onto life for far longer than he should have been able to, he got a heart.
I wish I could tell you that I knew it would happen. But only part of me did. It is a sweet, sweet victory. The child will live, and grow, and thrive. I know because I am still praying for him. That baby does not and most likely never will know who I am; that's okay.

I think what I'm trying to say is, I think maybe God saved that little one in part for my sake. Seen in black and white that looks awful, cold, and selfish. The baby is alive because God has some plan for his life that I do not and cannot know. But maybe--
Maybe God answers our prayers to give us something of His to hold onto.

And that's what I was thinking about. And it makes me trust Him more.
(Refer to the title of this post.)

In Pursuit of Pursuing

Tonight I watched a movie that I really really like for the second time.
I enjoy being the only person in a group of people to have seen a good movie, mostly because if I am the only person to have seen it, no one around me can butt in with those horribly obnoxious kind-of-spoilers, where they giggle in just the place they shouldn't if anyone else is to enjoy the film, or comment "oh, yeah" on a part that seems, at the time, innocuous. I enjoy the security of knowing that will not happen, and the silence of the people who have not seen the movie. For, having never seen it, they are forced to exert an energy of concentration that I am entirely free from.
Except for this one little thing, a little thing that occurred to me tonight as the film resolved and fireworks of understanding sent spangled sparks drifting down on the heads of my illuminated friends. The movie (which movie it was, I withhold, because my generic point will be cluttered up with specifics if you know which movie I mean, and that would be so annoying) was one that made you think; the plot was original without being frightening or really all that suspenseful, and the characters were lovable as well as engaging, even the bad ones. The point of the film is not blatant, not the romantic-comedy guy-gets-girl routine, nor the action-adventure guy-gets-girl-with-large-explosions-in-background rigmarole. No, the point of this film was a bit more obscure than that, and the first time I saw it I didn't quite grasp it entirely-- at least, not enough to thoroughly verbalize. But tonight, as I watched for the second time, I saw the hidden threads that I had only guessed at the first time, the things that tied it all together and made it a coherent whole. This is my problem: I think I liked it better when I didn't get it entirely.
I still like it; it's still a very creative, enjoyable movie. But to figure it out, to see all the pieces and draw all the conclusions-- well, it's anticlimactic. Capturing the elusive continually proves to be something of a letdown.
This thought prompts the beginnings of philosophical ponderings on the concept of the chase-- why things pursued are so attractive-- because they are uncaught, immaterial to an extent, and thus can be idealized...
But I don't want to think too hard about it, because then I might understand it and well, that might just spoil everything.

Witless

I am not used to this.
I am sitting in a van full of people and loud laughter. There is an atmosphere of jocularity. Joke follows joke, punch line after punch line, as each person takes a turn to contribute something funny, something sarcastic, something no one else thought of.
I am in the middle of the front bench. Reading a book and trying not to get hit by the flailing arms that come with the laughter.
I am used to reading books. I am not used to not being part of the laughter.

I am an alto on the Souls A'Fire summer tour team, traveling to the Bahamas, Chicago, Memphis, and North Carolina. We are halfway through our time in Chicago now. I got kind of a tan in the Bahamas and not enough sleep in Memphis.
And here, it hits me.
In this group, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am not the loud one. I am not the funny one. I am not the one who sings good. I am still the one who knows all the big words, but that distinction is more of a burden here than anything else.
The dynamics have shifted, and every niche I've ever been able to squeeze myself into has been blocked off. The labels I point to when people want to know about me have been stripped away.
I wish I were a big enough person to tell you that I like it. I wish I were that visionary type, the kind who would be excited by this opportunity to grow and change and reach beyond what they've always been. Before this tour started, I kind of thought I was that person, a little.
No, not really. This is actually acutely uncomfortable.
There are a whole lot of reasons for that. There are many things I could say, and have said to myself, many times over. About why this is kicking in now, while it did not during a whole academic year of weekly rehearsals and engagements; about what in particular is triggering certain reactions in me; about why this is logical and natural and to be expected.
I'm kind of thickheaded. Even the most basic of concepts has to marinate in my subconscious for a while before becoming real to me, and generally the knowing of something is not distilled without being jarred by some experience or other.
I told myself before we left that this would be different, even hard. I told my best friends to pray for me, with dramatic head shake: "I think this will be a real growing experience."
Growing experience indeed. I'd like to find myself three weeks ago and give me a good kick in the shins.

I have no worthwhile words to contribute. I can't make funny observations or sarcastic comebacks. I don't entirely know why. I just know that over the past week and a half in particular it dawned on me that everything I was saying was banal, pointless to the extent of embarrassment. So I have, largely, stopped talking in the way that everyone is used to hearing Colleen talk.
I order food at restaurants.
I answer people when they ask me questions.
I pray.
I sing.
Markedly absent is any form of jest or raillery. What I do say is only in the safety of an uproar, when no one hears or acknowledges me anyway.
Two days ago the knowledge of this made me morose.
Today it makes me think.

I am a firm believer in Reasons for Things. Not for all things, always, but I like to analyse what comes my way.
I asked God (having first asked Myself and found Myself unable to produce an answer any more satisfactory than "everyone hates you and you are doing something wrong"): "God, what am I doing here?"

No bloggable response as of yet. For now I must content myself with being the non-entertainer of the group (and there is the rub, friends: not that I would be thought silent, but that I would be thought not-entertaining. And after all the griping I have done about being seen for nothing but funny. Human nature, ladies and germs, is a funny thing). Content myself with being an alto (a sometimes soprano) and very little more. What does define me? It appears that I must find that out.

Walking

When I get restless at night I go for walks on the track outside. I sometimes seek out company for these excursions, but as the semester has progressed I have felt increasingly the need to be alone. This is not typical of me, but I am learning to depend on it. My walks are my time with God. Some nights my walks take me up to the top of the hill, and I sit and talk to him about everything, and tell him what I think, and he responds and we have a good conversation. Those nights, I lay back against the grass and stare up at him, and he winks at me and I smile, and we just sit there thinking together. And sometimes I go to the hill to fight something out because I need his help.

Tonight I walk out to the track and choose to go right, arbitrarily. The sky is big here, yawning cavernous overhead, most of its treasures obscured by the dragon's breath (or by light pollution, whichever you prefer). Only a handful of gems pierce through, scattered across the inverted bowl of sky, but a handful is all I need, to look and trace and see him in.

I tell him a little about my day, and he listens, and I tell him about what I think, and ask his advice, and he tells me the same thing he's told me a thousand times before. I nod, like I always do, but I really think it's starting to sink in. I try to pray, but each prayer I start peters out after a few sentences. They are striving prayers, forced. My heart agrees with them but does not join in, so I stop. Tonight is just a walking night.

The track is populated. There are several pairs of joggers, girls running together for safety. Measured breathing offsets their pounding footsteps as their legs rhythmically swish past. I stay on the outer edge of the track so that I do not get in their way. I hear a voice coming from across the soccer field, a young man who talks to himself as he runs, encouraging his heart and lungs in mixed Spanish and English. He is fast, and has already passed me once, calling motivation to his muscles: the spirit is willing, but the flesh tires quickly. I am still walking.

When I walk with people I walk fast. Part of me dislikes being in the middle of a pack, part of me is afraid I will be left behind, part of me just likes to be early. But when I walk alone I take my time. It's me and him anyway, and there's nothing that could really be called a destination, so all I have to do is avoid Spanglish guy. I follow the paved path, hearing the subdued noises of my jeans and flip-flops mingle with the incessant, whispering breeze. I watch the runners on the track ahead and wonder: are they running to or away from something? Probably just aerobic points.

Tonight is a walk for no reason. Trees set patterns across the path and I flash in and out of them: light shadow light shadow light. I alternate between looking up at the stars and looking down at the path, and I am looking down when movement in a crack of asphalt catches my eye. An inchworm struggles over the crevice. He is about one-third of the way across, and I want to help him, but there are two joggers closing in behind me and I am walking on before I realize it. The joggers pass me and I retrace my steps a few yards, but I don't see the inchworm. I hope he made it.

I decide to circle the track again. Spanglish guy is about to give out. I am pulling for him. The toes on my left foot go numb as I reach the backside of the baseball stadium, and I wonder why I am still walking. The grassy creek bank rises to my right and I look out over the fog that has gathered in the creek bottom that I somehow missed my first time around, it occurs to me that the sight is probably worth numb toes. Overhead the Dipper empties itself into the swirling ether, and I tip my head back and drink deeply the elixir that is the clean, leaf-scented night air.

Once when I was a kid, the power went out in my neighborhood independent of thunderstorm, and my sister and brother and I went out and marveled at the brightness of the moon. I wish, only partly kidding, for all the power to go out here. But it doesn't, which is probably a good thing.

Footsteps crunch behind me on the gravel beside the track and my friend Caroline tosses me a greeting as she runs by. Caroline is blond and athletic and kind, and whenever I see her I smile, because she is that kind of person. I watch her run, not on the track, but beside it, over the grass in parts, and through puddles. Inspired, I too leave the track and cut across the soccer fields. This does nothing to improve the state of my toes, but after a brief consultation my toes and I decide that cold dewy grass is worth it.

I pause in the middle of the field and want very much to say something, but nothing comes to mind. I think he heard me anyway.

He and I don't talk much as I climb the hill again, taking it at a gradual slope to make it easier on my toes, but I say goodnight when I hit the sidewalk and he nods, and I know for the millionth time the peace that can be in wordlessness.