in my own skin

It feels like, for the first time this week, I am coming off overdrive. I have tuned into my usual online listening, Reign Radio, and feel all this crap tension I have felt all week drain away with the coming of the weekend.

It's a week I'm glad to see over. It was a heavy week; feeling like a hamster in a wheel, racing to get nowhere. Nothing really accomplished; getting out of it sweaty and exhausted, same place I started. But it's the way it goes.

I'm tired (as usual when I post) and stink of work day and cigarette smoke. I spent the late evening with neighbours of ours, drinking black tea with too much sugar, wreathed in smoke from handrolled cigarettes.

The neighbours; he's from Quebec, she's Cree, from Saskatchewan. I am more comfortable with them than with people my own age. He translated French recipes for me and we discussed WWII and his years in the Canadian airforce in the 1950's. I think the most fulfilling part of spending time with them is I know they like me; they call me "girl", send me off with gifts, invite me back. And that sure is something these days. Maybe I'm jaded, but my faith in people of my generation dwindles. People are so involved, so engaged, but there's so little community: They already have friends, church, committments. It seems there's little room or time to get to know another person or extend oneself. And it's rare that I can tell if someone genuinely wants my company or not.

So it's a strange mixture of feelings I sit here stewing in. Frustration, satisfaction, gratitude, disappointment, peace, uncertainty. Like something's healing. Like I want to lash out.

I feel frustrated with my faith. I feel frustrated with my hang ups. I wonder if I'll ever be in a social structure of believers; of people who can be real and help each other grow. I sometimes miss old friendships, however unhealthy. But I'm alien to the old; yet don't fit the new. Clumsy limbo. Awkward participant.

But I guess wherever this is going, I feel the molding. I can see that I need time; time to come out of the narcotic haze. Time to see my real personality cut loose. Time to be formed in the shape I have been rebelling against for so long. Time to let ingested untruths seep away. Time for Martin and I to see to each other's core, to find in each other more wholeness and blessing than we thought earthly possible.

"I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him."

"Behold, it was for my welfarethat I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back."