Uber Marianne

Well, almost. At present it’s only twenty-nine years and three hundred and sixty four days. And I sit here on my bed in the glow of a bedroom lamp, glaring at my throat because it just keeps coughing for no flipping good reason (pointed look, bad throat!), thinking about all that’s come before and all that’s promised to come along. Simon posted a Happy Birthday greeting on my “Wall” on Facebook- I thought about posting back, but I probably would have only said something snarky and uninspired like, “Shut up and leave me alone!”

I warned you it would be uninspired.

Anyway, I didn’t do it. And I won’t. And I wouldn’t because what have I got to be mad at him about? Other than the fact that I was metaphorically down the street from his house last year and when I rang him up, instead of saying “Sure, drop on in” like a good neighbor, he told me to bugger off as if I were a sheep thieving bandit. Maybe it’s an accurate description. At any rate, he was frightened of me and I can’t help but feel the worst about that in the end.

I also got an email from Herbie. Boy, was I ever crazy about him . . . with his crazy corkscrew hair and Tourist Bureau of Canada clothes, with his ‘ism jokes and french pronunciations . . .  and he’s going to be a father. Geez, what happens? One day you’re some kind of raving lunatic, usually with a borderline alcohol problem, la-di-da-ing your way along,and  then a few days later you’re thirty years old waiting for your wife to have a baby. Amazing. I think he’ll be a good dad. He has a way of centering on someone in such a way that they feel that they themselves are the one constant in the universe. I’ve never experienced such a thing as a child but it certainly sounds beneficial.

So . . . what’s there to say on my 30th? Not much, except I’m looking for a house, will probably be getting married soon, want to get started on a doctorate program, and am pretty convinced I have a sexual addition. Nothing really that spectacular. I’m hoping to keep learning, keep growing, keep writing, and more than all these others, keep becoming more and more refined and like God. I’ve been encouraged of late in the Word. Just that there is the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Just that God is good and righteous and merciful and on the throne. Just that God can redeem anything. Lessons I learn over and over again, and sweeter each time.

I’ve also thought perhaps I will find a different Bible Study, not that the one I was attending is bad. It’s only that I was listening to LaSayre Bradleypreach tonight with his beautiful crotchety old man voice, and I thought, When I go to this study, I don’t find myself going away having learned more about God. I find that there is a good deal of emphasis (and understandably so) on who the Holy Spirit wants me to be and how do I really have Christ in my life and paying  attention to the places where I’m screwing up. (I admit that I may have missed the point, and if that’s the case, forgive me.) But, although I get the importance of those things, I think they really make sense for the group who are for the most part 26 and younger. 26 and younger is a really great time to ask those sort of questions, when your life still really does seem fluid and like you’re still carving out adulthood from it, figuring out who you are at all much less in Christ. I asked them of myself , usually between shots at that age, but that’s really a whole other line of thought. The point is . . . and it is not to say that I think I have any more claim to spiritual greatness than anyone else, merely that God seems to have steered me in this direction .  .  . but the point is that God is the center of everything, and He’s working in us each day, and He’s graceful and has provided through dependence on Him the ability for us to be able to be gracious to one another. The point is that this is real and we are a family and we should meet each others needs and experience depth and help and compassion with and for one another. I’m not saying that those things don’t happen there, only that I have not experienced them in the way I’m trying to explain. Perhaps I haven’t given it enough of a chance, I’m sure I probably haven’t. What I’m trying to say though with all of this is that if I sit and ponder about God by talking about myself and positing on things I should improve and need to learn because of God, surely, am I not still in the end just talking about myself?  Am I not misdirected somewhat in my focus?

I could be wrong. I really could, I’m not just trying to be falsely humble. I’ll have to pray for direction in it. But I am lonely for true fellowship and real definable growth. I hope I find a place where that can happen.

Well, that’s it for my Birthday dissertation, and I see now that it really is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! :)

Why can’t life be a montage? Complete with quirky music and reaction shots? Why instead must it be a long, drawn out, day-after-day kind of thing? When I just want to find-an-apartment-finish-school-get-a-better-job? It’s just one little compound item, right? But there’s always so many blasted But Firsts!!!

But First I have to do a multi-month tour of the greater Cincinnati area. But First I have to get in touch with Joan Icobacci (which is about as easy as trying to get Santa Claus on the phone). But First I have to get into grad school although But First I have to take the blankety-blank GRE. But First, I need a smoke.

. . .

Eh, it’ll all come out eventually, I guess.

Blarrrrrgh! I am apartment hunting! Abandon all hope, ye who tread here!!!

Good luck finding a place that doesn’t cost a bomb if it isn’t in Stabbytown. I mean, Stabbytown might have been alright in the late fifties when teenage shenanigans were nothing more than the isolated drag race on a school night and leather jacket wearing. It might have even been, shall we say, sort of poetic: dangerous, exciting.  But now it’s just plain unpleasant.

Anyhow, that’s what there is for now: anticipation.

Who do I belong to? It isn’t me. It’s by blood I was purchased and to dust I will return. Who is the Author my life as well as its Great Love? Only Jesus. Jesus alone.

And who am I? Can anyone even tell? I’ve been reading a book about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and while doing so it was mentioned that when Elijah did battle with the prophets of Baal and called down fire from Heaven, the prophets of Baal all resounded with cries that Elijah’s God was Lord. Can anyone tell that my God is Lord?

The point of the excerpt was that we Christians should pray outrageous prayers, like, for example, God, please shoot down fire from Heaven. But I think to myself that it isn’t the prayers that are missing, it’s me. I haven’t shown up to demonstrate what God has done for me. I’ve forgotten the beautiful and loving and radical and severe ways of my Master. And I haven’t been loving anyone very well at all.

And so, this radical prayer that I’ve been called to contemplate? Seems to lead me to a simple phrase: Pour me out of myself and You take up all the room. I’m Yours. And what purpose could I possibly have that is more valuable than Yours? How can I be so arrogant as to think that what it is I’m doing supercedes what You can do?

I am arrogant, and dishonest, and selfish and unmoving. And I believe with weeping hope that He will heal me from these things. I believe that if I truly ask, He will bless me by bestowing His manner in me. I believe He will give me the ability and the energy and the sustanence and the power to doggedly pursue Truth in all things.

So pray for me, friends, if you think of it. I have a long way to go.

If you want to know the truth . . . if you want to know the truth, I think at times it’s doomed. If you want to know the truth, I doubt that things will get better. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t believe he takes it seriously when I tell him that there’s something missing here.

What is it? What’s changed? Maybe nothing. Maybe there was nothing there to begin with, no spark or life to it or . . . desperate sort of affection. Maybe it’s all been so simple seeming because there was no great feeling, it was no great feat. Maybe it was a pattern that we both just fell into: this being with one another so much of this time, those kisses, those stated declarations of love, those gifts, those kindnesses. Maybe those moment were kind and joyful even in a way but were somehow scripted instead of spontaneous. Maybe my romances are always doomed.

It certainly seems that way at times. But I know of course that it’s just whining to say so.

I am mourning, and that is never a good thing to feel one must do while amidst a relationship. Mourning for what exactly? For all the things I thought I was being promised that I realize now I never was. For all the imaginings of a young and vibrant love story, one full of well-reasoned recklessness and wise passion. I wonder if there is such a thing. I mean, my last relationship was passionate,  but off the charts when it came to instability and, frankly, insanity. My current one is replete with security and no feeling at all. Is there not something in the middle? Or am I doomed to be unsatisfied?

I wonder what this is. I could almost swear it wasn’t always like this. Something has changed, and dramatically. Is he really just in pain? Or is there something he isn’t telling me? Where’s the disconnect coming from and does it really make sense to stay with someone just because you are with them if you’re not really with them after all? What was it that first brought us together? . . . I can’t seem to remember.

. . .

Sleep well, my Current Intention. Who knows what will be when you awake.

Excuse me? Excuse-yes? Yes, I’m ready to order. I’d like a cholesterol free life experience, you know what I mean? I don’t want to have heart troubles or feel sluggish. I need to be in peak shape so that I can run the good race, can’t have any heavy stuff weighing me down. So, if you don’t mind, could I have my life made with No Yokes, please?

If you’ve ever placed an order like this, I can relate. Recently at work there was a cafaffle about a locked door. The fact that the printer was behind it was most of the trouble, the reasons of which are largely inconsequential, and I needed to use that printer. Imagine having to waste the time it takes to unlock a door, purposelessly, a hundred times a day to get anything off the printer when you’re doing casework and have to get things off the printer all the time, constantly, ad nauseum, ad infinitim. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Probably isn’t; Not the point. The point IS that come Monday morning this week, after doing this for about two months, I had Had Enough. I was livid and decided to act like a child. I purposely went in and UNlocked the door at every opportunity hoping that it would stay that way, and when that didn’t work, I just left it standing open. I figured  two could play that whole Drive-Someone-Crazy-About-Something-As-Inane-As-A-Locked-Door Game (What? You’ve never played that one?). I fumed and complained and made a real jerk of myself.

But then something happened. A coworker of mine who was the dumping ground for my vitriol did something that absolutely changed my perspective and my attitude: She prayed for me. I didn’t know it at the time. I had gone outside for a minute to take a break from my rage with a book that just happened to be in my purse called Forgotten God, which is about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Ouch, by the way. And as I read, I thought, Is this Love I’m acting with? Or Selfishness?

And it occurred to me that I was angry because I didn’t have a choice about the way things were being run in my office, but I was being offered a choice about how I was going to run things in my heart and how that heart was reflected in my actions. And I decided I was going to submit to God and run it right, in a way that would please Him and make me, as His representative, be honorable to the great gifts I’d been given, like having the Holy Spirit to dwell within me and guide me. Like having a job, like having the capabilities to work it, like having the income it provides me to support myself, like having all the luxuries in life that make it not only possible but to seem even justifiable to complain. I realized that I couldn’t do anything about the yoke, but I could carry it with dignity and the grace befitting someone who professes Jesus as Lord.

So as I was saying earlier, if you want a life with No Yokes? Good luck finding anyplace that can fill that particular order. But if you care about your heart really, you will (as I am still continuing to) learn to bear them with courage, humilty, and above all else, Love.

I read a poem once all that postulated poetry is forged only out of a mire of depression. Certainly, it seems for me that I’m inspired to write down my thoughts mostly when my thoughts . . . are disappointing. Which is pretty lame, I’m thinking. So, in honor of this, I now submit to you the opposite.

I have so much to glorify God for. Not the least of which is the fantastic grasp of the English language I just demonstrated by ending that sentence with a preposition. But I also thank God for this job that I’ve been at for three weeks, for this relationship that I’ve been soldering with Erik for lo these many months, for this down-the-hall life with Bridget who is consistently cheerful and kind, for this sister and brother and father that I love so much, for this responsibility and joy in needing to serve my grandmother, for these renewed friendships with James and others I’ve lost, for these new acquaintances with the people in my life at work, for this lovely warm weather that is wafting into the city like a breeze, for this new attitude of capability and hopefulness that is spurring me on and encouraging to make better choices, every day, and not to be something I’m not, but to finally come into what I want to be. Yes, my dears, these are blessed days.

And most days are blessed if I really look. I’m busy and tired and dragging at times but I have purpose enough to be busy and tired and dragging. There are very few things that one can’t be grateful for in some way. Getting to the good stuff often requires understanding the bad stuff, and where it comes from, and pruning if necessary. And God has brought me to a place where I don’t so much have to remind myself of these things, but rather share the natural recognition that’s been taking place. I’m making artwork. I’m feeling up to the task of getting off the transfat and nicotine and into taking care of my body. I’m trying to learn and complete and write and grow. It’s a wonderful, low down, peaceful kind of feeling.

So there it is. A poem in the form of an everyday life that has everything to do with small and unceremonious joys.

Here’s the thing about dudes: Without fail, they will drive you nuts.

I kind of had that figured out a while ago. I mean, when you’re with a guy like Mark for three years-ish, you get the idea. But Erik? Really thought that might be different. Turns out it’s just a hard and fast rule and apparently.

So, what’s all this about you ask? Well, it all started this very afternoon when Erik called to let me know he wouldn’t be able to come over until eight o’clock. I was, and perhaps stupidly, disappointed and it was obvious in my voice. I didn’t yell at him, didn’t deride him, call him names, or even object to what he was doing, which was working. I was just disappointed. And from this, the whole stupid thing devolved.

I told him I would go and hang out with my brother and sister since he was busy and that was the end of our conversation. He was frustrated with me for being disappointed. Over the course of the next couple of hours, he texted a couple of times to see what I was up to and somehow got irritated with me for going shopping for paint with my roommate. But the truth is that he’s often been upset with me for hanging out with my friends. Almost as if I’m just supposed to sit around and wait till he gets around to me.

But that isn’t the biggest problem, which is that he doesn’t talk to me when there’s a problem. If I text him, he doesn’t answer. Instant message? Same thing. If I call, I get voice mail, again and again and again. But this isn’t the first time this has happened. It happens every time we have an argument or an issue that’s tough to resolve. I want to fix it, he refuses to face it. It’s enough to drive me crazy.

Because how in the world are we ever supposed to get to the other side of a problem if he won’t even talk about it? How do you cross a mountain if one of you won’t admit it’s there? It seems obvious to me that maturity begs for unblinking realizations. It seems that putting it under a rug doesn’t get your house clean and only makes it more likely for you to trip.

. . .

I love Erik. I really do. And there are moments when I look forward at my life without him and I panic. He’s wonderful in so many ways. Thoughtful and generous and handy and kind. Talented and skilled and hard working and sinewy. He’s made of firm stuff and would try his best to try his best for almost anyone it seems. So what’s the problem then? What is the problem? It’s just that he . . . won’t budge.

There are so many things that I think we’ve gotten resolved and then ten seconds later, there they are again and we have to go through the whole rigamarole all over. We have to go through what we feel and why we feel it, what we think should be and what is, and what we want from the other person that we’re not getting. Again. And again. And again. Everytime I think we’ve come to a consensus I feel blindsided when it comes right back, the same problem, all around us again like a smog. I wish there was some way that I could make it work on my own, but the sticky thing about a relationship is that it takes two.

I want Erik. I love Erik. But I also want to have relationships with my friends. I also want to be able to express my emotions without being criticized for them, without them being stored up for ammunition. I want to be able to apologize and have apologies respected and returned, not just someone appreciating the fact that I’ve seen how wrong I was. I want to feel I only have to apologize for things that I do that are really and truly wrong.

I received an email last night from my cousin, asking me to please and and finally return my grandmother’s phone calls. It accused me of not being aware that life is fleeting and can be full of regret if you don’t take opportunities to love people when you can. It said again and again that it was not trying to be offensive, just trying to help, dear, just trying to help. It tried to reassure me that there are still people in this family that care about me.

I found it pretty presumptuous. Not in the least because my gramma hasn’t called me in a good month and a half. But also because no one on my mom’s side of the family calls me ever, at all, for any reason, unless they guilting me into doing something or want to rub in what kind of wonderful people they are. Up on the gossip and doing their good deed. If, that is, by “good deed” they mean speaking in hushed tones and clucking their tongues in mournful disdain. My life? Is none of their business.

Yes, I have a problem with bitterness.

I’m actually just becoming aware of it, so thank God for His mysterious ways. If you’d asked me last week if I was a bitter person, I would have said absolutely not and spouted some meandering life lesson about letting go of the past. Most of my intimates can tell you I’ve demonstrated such at some time or another in life. Yet still, just reading just those few well intentioned lines made me livid. I felt imposed upon and exposed and misjudged and misunderstood and lied to all at the same time.

If I may exhaust my vitriol, I don’t think my extended family still cares for me. I don’t think it matters to them one way or the other what I do or whether I ever see them again, so long as they can feel sorry for me about decisions I’ve made or successes I have yet to have. I’m speaking about them as a unit, not as individuals. Because as individuals, they are always polite, always polished, always chuckling lightly at some joke and laying the coats on their beds. But I’m not one of them, am I? I’m the guest, not the host.  Not the Friend or the Sister or even the beloved Relation. Just the Guest.

Even that line (I typed “lie” at first on accident-do my fingers know something Idon’t?), about there still being people in the family who love me and my sister is alienating. There are people in the group that care for you, O Out Of The Group One. You are being honored by the collective. Will you, can’t you, won’t you please be nice? Can’t you just come over and be valiant and upstanding and obviously pretending to be as perfect as we actually are?

Ugh.

I know what this stems from. I’ve been angry at them for a long time and it’s simply festered over the years. All that time my mother was so ill, all that time her body was wasting away-O goodly, kindly ones-where were you? Where were you while she was suffering? You only came to watch her die, dragging your mass of bodies into my and my sister and my father and my grandmother’s private space. She was ours, because we loved her, and we watched her life either from the beginning of our own or the beginning of hers, and we saw everything she grew from and into. We saw her shrink in ways we had never imagined after she had spent the whole rest of her life growing in strength and wisdom and promise. We cleaned her up and took her out and went to Wendy’s to buy her chicken sandwiches and sit with her, and talk with her, and breathe her same air. We were the ones she called to lift her up when her body began failing her. We were the ones who bound her feet at night.

And where were you? Except for three days after they had assured us that nothing else could be done, sitting in a stale hospice room with your four hundred pint sized relations who were too young to come and look at death like that, whom you sent to go and color, whom you told without saying so that the slipping away of my mother’s life wasn’t something that was worth their notice, that you knew they couldn’t sit down and pay attention to? And afterward, with your arms outstretched toward my sister and I, to ask for a piano for your church.

It isn’t as though my cousin is to blame for these things. She wasn’t even a part of most of them. She isn’t to blame for anything that happened at hospice or afterward and neither is her brother. And neither are the rest of them really. I know I’m being unfair. I’m being grossly unfair. Part of me wants to object and complain that they never talk to me about her. And the other part of me knows that if they did, I would inwardly rebel and shout that they didn’t know who my mother was at all and how dare they make presumptions. I can’t be pleased . . .

But God will ease.

I am praying for strength to let all these things go. To stop clutching at them with righteous indignation. The truth is no one knows what to do with something like that, and that we all make mistakes, and that we all overlook our own. The Truth is that if Christ can ask his Father to forgive for not knowing, I should certainly be able to forgive for doing no worse than perhaps I would have done if I were they and they, I. I praise God that He can make so many lessons out of loss. I praise Him that He keeps revealing and healing and working on me. He certainly knows I need it.

When I started writing, I did so because I was angry. I’m not anymore. God has such a particular way of absorbing the thrashing of my soul until it is spent and soothing me with the duties that I have to preform, regardless of the actions of anyone else. He is . . . He is . . .

He is marvelous.

Rain is a blessing in Price Hill. It’s the one thing that makes everyone head indoors instead of sitting stooped on porch steps, with a twist of burning weeds between their fingers with the volume turned up five hundred decibels. It makes the streets slick with perspiration on a summer night, shimmering slick with streetlights. And quiet, blessedly quiet, those few who venture out seem to breath a little deeper with some uncomprehensible reverence.

Such a night is tonight.

Poor Erik. And what a wonder. To deal with all my crazy and still here he sits, hunched over on the edge of my bed, dipping artichoke leaves into peppered butter, somehow content even after my earlier torrent of complaints and stresses and feelings of being overwhelmed. I told him last night when I was acting like a petulant brat and wanted to go to bed while he was still fixing the electric pro bono in the wee hours (I know-I’m a jerk.), that it was no fun dating someone who’s perfect. But I guess it isn’t so bad. He comes through in these moments and still loves with determination even when I know I must be driving him crazy. I can tell because I’m driving myself a little crazy too.

I’m not quite sure why everything seems to be so much right now. Certainly the battles I’m currently in training for are nothing in comparison to what God has brought me through already. But at that time I had armor. I was fortified through God’s great grace to bring me wisdom enough to seek Him, and in joy and humility. But as I am so apt to do, I’ve drifted off to sleep on the battlefeild with the cannons overhead as a lullaby. I’m disappointed in myself, but there it is.

But God is good and merciful and praise to Him that He is. It isn’t so much that the struggles are insurmountable, but I’ve lost my eagles wings. God will provide. And I call Him a liar when I refuse to believe that. And God’s will shall prevail, no matter what I think it should have been or how my perfect end translates. Sometimes it seems the most reckless thing of all to trust Him implicitly. But He is granting me the courage to do so.