Monday 19 April 2010

After the lull

In blogging, I mean. In life, there has been no lull. Just very exciting weather and very unpredictable too. I am struggling with what God has next for me, but while I struggle, I also bask in the luxury of knowing it's his job. Not mine! So much has changed. Externally and internally.

I have changed careers, given up a job, moved countries, changed my prayer priorities (!), learnt ten times more about relationships in one year than in the past 8 or 9... It feels like I am doing more growing up now and learning about myself than I did when I was a teenager, and standing on bright but hazy thresholds. I am still standing on bright but hazy thresholds... but I have grown up, and I am much more cognizant of all that the experience holds, much more critical of my own character and reactions to situations, much more objective, much more subjective.

Sometimes the older diary entries, the blog entries, the memories, the wispy pieces of dialogue preserved in affective memory, all of these seem like that of a familiar stranger. Sometimes my reaction is a sudden remembrance of me - that me. Oh, I remember me. But it is not me any more, is it? There are days when I want to scream this. Other days when I want to take this knowledge in my arms and dance with it. Other days there are when I smile wryly at it and refuse to let it hurt or amuse. There are other days when I am absolutely, gob-smackingly floored by gratitude to the one who will not let go of me, who will hold on to me while I stretch and grow... Sometimes I am so grateful for the growth, for sense and sensibility, that I want to cry.

It's a prerogative, they say, of the woman. I wonder if that is a compliment. I suppose it depends on the complimenter. But sometimes I want to cry, in joy, in absolute, gut-busting, body-propelling joy!

Do boys cry? Yes. And *that* is a compliment. I wish more of them would though.