Remembrance, Resurfacing, Repentance.
It would be an understatement to say that I’m a reflective person. I think pretty deeply about a certain set of things and a certain group of people in my life who are important to me. I think, and I ponder, and mentally ruminate, and then sometimes I write. This public blog is the third of my three currently active blogs; the first is semi-private, and the second is absolutely private.
The second blog is the one that gets the least attention, though it is the blog that most closely mirrors my uninhibited, most genuine self – with all its trappings of fear and joy and anxiety and triumph. That blog gets the writings of the highest of my highs, and the lowest of the lows. Today I went back to look through it for the first time in a few weeks, and revisited a lone entry from last fall. It followed a silent summer, which is too bad, because there was plenty to say then…
By the time fall rolled around, I was angsty and restless, stretched to the limit like a proper piece of taffy, and emotionally aimless in parts of my heart. If a sound were to illustrate my state of being at the time, it would be – I think – like a little metal pellet being shaken randomly inside of an old soup can. No grand echo, no purposeful boom. Just…tinny. Irritatingly tinny. And chaotic.
The chaos and restlessness were enough to prevent me from blogging extensively [or hardly at all] about what was going on then. This lone entry represents a rare moment of quiet when I calmed down enough to reflect again, and write. I wrote about things that three girlfriends had sat down and said to me that night. I wrote them down because I didn’t want to forget what they said, and it was important to me then. It’s still important to me now.
Comments on what they said is another matter for another day. Today, I was convicted by reading the words of one of my sisters – just reading them, I could hear her voice speaking to me as clearly as I heard her, sitting across from the dinner table that night. That was six months ago. Were it not for this blogpost, that conversation would have long been forgotten.
I haven’t seen her since we celebrated her birthday at the beginning of November. Can it be that five months have already passed between now and then? She’s missed out on so much of my life, so many lessons I’ve learned, between now and then. And who knows what host of things I’ve missed out on in her world. Seeing her words jump out off the screen today, I knew I had to resurface. It was time.
It wasn’t always time. I had my reasons for staying hidden for so long. It wasn’t just the facial reason that I gave – that I was busy – though, doubtless, I was plenty busy, with more on my plate than I could handle on more than many occasions. But more than that, I needed the time away. In a way, I think I needed to break away from my usual support groups [or at least some of them] and walk on my own in a different direction – take a walk by the ocean, take a hike through the woods, trek out on the desert sand, wander in circles and just set out by myself for a while. Not that I didn’t still connect with friends – but I connected less deeply with the ones I kept around, and then virtually disappeared from the rest [like this particular sister]. It was lonely, but my soul craved that loneliness as much as it hated it. Because it meant that I had to be alone with God, and that’s something I knew I had to learn how to do – it’s a way I had to learn how to be – before I could shake the chaos and return to normalcy.
So that’s what I did. I did what I thought was necessary, and as circumstances around me got worse right around November and December, I turned inward – and upward. It was a painful, purifying experience. It was monumentally difficult at some moments. Curl in a ball on my bed and cry myself to sleep kind of difficult. Sit on the floor next to my desk and kneel to pray and weep to God kind of difficult. Worship through music and struggle through the parts about God loving me kind of difficult. Looking back, I know that God provided strength and love enough – even though I didn’t always feel that way.
Like I said, it was purifying. And I know God used that desert to bring about growth and newness in my heart. He didn’t keep me in the desert for too long; He brought me through it before I thought He would. But still, I didn’t resurface. I kind of did, for some people, but never reconnected with this sister. Until today.
And even though I had good reasons for disconnecting, I had to repent as I reached out to her today, asking her to join me sometime in the next week for dinner. I had to repent because I really am sorry that I waited so long to reestablish our relationship. And I shouldn’t have disconnected in the way that I did. Signals are important in any case, and total disconnection the way that I did it was unjustifiable. I expect more from others – and certainly from myself.
I hope she writes back soon; I expect that she will. And I will meet with her, and give her a big hug, and tell her in person how sorry I am for being irresponsible. I’ll explain the things that warrant explaining, though not in the way of excuse… just in the way of explanation. I don’t think it’s too late to apologize. It’s never too late.