The Safe Way
It's one of those days, weeks even, that just starts by tumbling over itself. It's busy. It's wrought with commitments and deadlines. It's subject to the direction of others and not myself. It's a week where I begin with a sucker punch to the soul. And then I end it with one too.
It's been that sort of month actually.
Today didn't escape it.
One thing after another just sticks in, twists, gives another jab, for emphasis and pulls out, leaving a gaping hole.
Okay. Maybe that's melodramatic. I told Season that today, after we ordered at Twisted Root and the name they gave us for our order was Amanda Hugandkiss (think about it for a second…). Oh, the irony. Season took the name-card quickly, before I could dissolve in a puddle of tears at the counter. Never does singleness feel more acute than December.
Everyone wants to know if I'm going home for Christmas. How do you explain to people that there is no home to go to? That every place I've lived has been home and yet is still so much not home? That my family is states and continents away and wouldn't be all in the same room if we all lived in the same town anyway. How do you say all that to someone? Here, there you go? Whaddya wanna do with that now?
It's easier, I tell a friend this morning, to just hermit myself, cloister in, bed down, hibernate until this month is over.
I still haven't decided whether or not I'll make good on that threat (or promise).
I'm ready for heaven. More and more I'm ready for heaven. I'm ready for wide paths, paths that don't require me to do or say or be hard things. I'm ready for constant joy and the end of brokenness and disappointment. I'm ready for the key of all joy to be put in my hand, for the door to open wide to all things redeemed and all hurt finished. I'm ready to feel safe instead of scared.
I'm ready to walk forward, look behind me and see a closed door to every broken thing, and a heavenly home stretching on in front of me.
O Come. Oh COME.
Come Emmanuel.
Come and be with us. We know you are with us. But be with us here, in person. Tangible. Touchable. Reachable. Known.
Oh, come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
