tonight

"It's not what you live, but how you choose to live what you live."
Henri Nouwen


i've never been a very decisive person. perhaps because in a lot of cases my preferences aren't all that strong. or oftentimes because of a fear of commitment for one reason or another--how it affects another, failure, what's left behind, etc.

but then there's life. not too long ago i was informed and i guess have realized some how particular i can be in certain things. i've always been very decisive and direct in how i have wanted to live my life. i have wanted a life that is not my own. i have wanted to give. i have wanted to follow God wherever he might take me. i have tried to follow the belief that the more you give away in love the more you are.

"it is the heart that kills us in the end. just one more whole and broken bone that cannot mend. as it was now and ever shall be amen."

the old stadium was my hollow company tonight. i don't know what i was expecting, or what i was waiting for. it doesn't really matter though, because nothing really did happen. and there i sat, in the same place as the last time i was there one spring day--right about the time the concrete was informing me of my cyst's arrival. what a year.

i think i'm tired of choosing. i'm tired of trying to choose life, love, and hope. i'm tired of letting God make the decisions that leave me like this.

come you friends of Job. offer me your blessed explanations on all that i am not seeing--how i am being so short-sighted and this will all be for the best for me. let me know all the things i have done wrong to bring me here. sit with me for a few days--or since i suppose we're all too busy for that, maybe a few hours. go ahead. tell me that i shouldn't write about this so publically. tell me i should finish another lament with the upward turn towards hope at the end. and tell me what i don't know and no one can seem to tell--what the hell it means to "take heart."

maybe i can choose to live differently. maybe that is what separates the saints. i am no saint. and this euthenasia patient is having second thoughts. i wonder if that happens to people like that--they have a moment of panic just before they go. but then they remember that there was nothing they really wanted to cling to anyway. and off they go to wherever they will go.

i don't have anywhere to go.
and anything i would cling to is out of reach.
so i sit.
on concrete.
watching the clouds pass.
and no rain.
and no angel.
and the dead of the night,
with no dawn in sight.
and the shame of my self-pity.
waiting for a reason--
does there even need to be a reason?

and the most distant shrug of my heart sighs faith. to walk by faith. one tiny step at a time. i guess all this is it somehow--in that everything i know tells me that you have abandoned me, but...but, i commit myself into your hands. in just about the weakest commitment i think i have ever made.

"we are not sailors lost out on the sea. we were always headed toward eternity."