Wednesday, 05 November 2008

• Thrashing thrustingly and rustling gustily!

  Whenever the weather is very windy, I can't help but think about Winnie-the-Pooh and his blustery day. Today was a very blustery day. The "false front" on my saloon/office building shook and creaked in the wind. I had attempted to pin my stupid bangs back, but the wind slapped the bobby pin into the grass as soon as I stepped outside. Oh, well. I like wind.
  
  Tonight, however, I was lonely. I wanted to hang out with people, but my small handful of new friends were otherwise engaged. Instead of being depressed, I went for a walk. It was only 7:30pm, but it felt like midnight. I walked out past the dining room and into a field before I noticed that I had left any source of man-made light - nor did I need any. Huge trees complained in their raspy, leafy voices as the wind buffeted their branches. It sounded like applause from far away. The moon shone so bright that I ended up sitting in the shadow of a massive tree to experience the thrill of raw weather. The wind spat leaves all around me on the ground. No leaf could stay for more than a few seconds on the same patch of grass before it was ungraciously relocated.
  
  Somehow, in all this madness, I said something that I wasn't even thinking at the moment.
  
  "I love you, too."
  
  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, they were caught up in the air and delivered to the Maker of big trees, startling moonlight, and ferocious wind.
  
  
  
  
  From 8-5 every day, I try so hard to be a grown-up and take care of things at work. I try to be perceptive and smart about what I do - and I'm getting better. However, as soon as 5pm hits, so does loneliness. I take the breath that I've been holding all day, and let it out in a big whoosh. I plod the couple hundred feet to my house and sit down on my bed. What now? I always think. There's a huge gap between 5pm and bedtime, and sometimes that "free" time is rather ominous. I think about watching a movie, but movies are no fun alone. I think about cleaning or doing laundry, but I do that all the time - and I'm pretty much caught up. I think about getting a cup of coffee, but I don't like spending money on something I can make in my kitchen. It's a bit depressing sometimes. I miss Philadelphia - getting on a train, going to a park with a book, and reading for a while (or enviously watching cute families with babies). I get very claustrophobic here. I feel bad sometimes, because I call my friends back home or in other places merely to complain about how lonely I am without them.
  
  But - tonight, God taught me something about loneliness. It's like being grounded by parents when you do something wrong. God put me in "time-out" so I'd be quiet enough for him to say how much he loves me. The whispering leaves and branches that I witnessed tonight retold an old story of creation I'd heard a thousand times.
  
  When I was little, I used to think I could "out-love" people if I said it more often than they did - I think that the dregs of those beliefs still hang around sometimes. Once, I even filled up an entire sheet of notebook paper with the words, "I love you" for someone I had a crush on (thank goodness he never saw it). Even now, in my journal, I will wrestle with God and yell at him for things - but I always come back to him at the end of the entry. I tell him how much more he knows, how stupid I am to get angry at him, and how much I love him. I love him.
  
  No matter how many times I tell my beautiful Creator that I love him, he can't be "out-loved". For every finger of wind that brushes across your face, every branch that snags your shirt, every time you lift your face to the warm sunlight - is God saying how much he loves you. He wins.
  
  
  

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