as life continues, so does the silence which has encompassed me since my return to the states. major life changes, the loss of something dear in my life has reinforced the wall of loneliness that surrounds me. how is it that almost every day for two years i have woken up and felt out of place? lost. confused. discontent. heavy.

and to whom do i give this heaviness? surely it has worn down on those closest to me. i have seen it do just that. and how do we give it to God when it doesn’t feel like he actually takes it? i dont mean to say that He has never comforted me in distress or that He has never lifted my burdens. but i must say that the heaviness usually at least has his foot in the door.

in the spirit of community and communal growth, one of our pastors has assigned to a good number of us a small project or a book to read. after completing our task, we are to report back- give summaries, our opinions, and what we believe this has to do with our community at church but also the implications on the faith as a whole.

i happened to be assigned the book “Things Unseen: Living in Light of Forever.” not only does the cover call to me, but i sense that the content calls to me as well. perhaps it will put a name to these constant longings and groanings that i experience. i know i talk about books a lot. but there is something wonderful about the words of others. words that drip with your own thoughts and feelings. thoughts and feeling you had no idea existed. or that perhaps you did not know could be named.

have you ever felt this:
“There you are, standing at a window watching oak leaves flutter down from dark boughs, and without warning your whole body fills with a longing for something you can’t name, something you’ve lost but never had, that you’re nostalgic for yet don’t remember. You sense a joy so huge it breaks you, a sorrow so deep it cleanses…somehow it is both laughter and mourning, spring and winter, homecoming and exile…And you wonder How can this be?“

you are longing for home. and we do. there is this longing for home that easily works its way in. longing for your mother’s chicken quesadillas. for blissfully running barefoot through the sprinklers. searching for blackberries in the back of the neighborhood. your dad taking you trick-or-treating. we long for home, and home here is but a glimpse of what is truly home.

though we have this sense that we are not home yet, thad (one of our elders/pastors) has reminded our community that this is not the end of the story. that we are not sitting here waiting to escape this place and what we do here does matter.
it really sparked in me when he said that if we were made only for heaven and “eternity” and earth is just a filler, why didn’t we just start out in heaven? instead, there is this connection between heaven and earth, now and the future. for eternity is eternity- past present and future.

for now, this is where my thoughts rest, though i’m sure that in the future they will continue to evolve as i get deeper into this book and this series on hope.

i will close with one passage that i identify with all too well sometimes:
“In response, we can become so cynical that we position ourselves, so self-indulgent that we devour ourselves, so despairing that we collapse into ourselves. In fact, self-pity and self-indulgence, boredom and despair, envy and greed- such are only yearnings gone sour. They are just the greasy residue that remains after yearning has gone unfulfilled too many times. A sadness like ash settles on our doings and our desires. We find trinkets to fiddle with, trivia to distract us. A once-burning zeal dwindles to a dry itch, and everything becomes a frantic attempt to get the passion back, or a plodding resignation to its death.”