Gaurd rails

One year out. I sit alone. I can do whatever I want to do. And thats the problem.
The safe guard rails that reign in marriage, reign in a broken man’s propensity to be selfish. I miss deeply the safety of marriage. The committment. The focused love. The daily chance to be chiseled and refined by the love of another, deep and divine.

Its been the longest year in my brief existence. Caught up in a web of grief, distance, and drama. I have circled. Kept circling, even in the darkest hours of the year. The quiet desperation that lingers just below the surface of my life emerges too easily, uncomfortably sometimes. I’ve found value in the humility that admitted desperation brings. In this season , the busyness, the hurriedness has not been able to overshadow the jaggedness, the rawness of desperation. The tentacles of my soul are more prickly today. I hear more clearly the tragic stories of others and try to lean into the desperateness. In hopes that by more clearly getting in touch with it that I will crack my heart open to God and the future I know he has planned for me. I long to hear clearly, to be open to the God who sometimes can’t be found.

Grief’s sharp jagged edge cuts deeply. At the strangest times.
For some reason, flying on airplanes is one of the most difficult times for me.
Maybe its because husbands and wives and lovers get on planes together, joined at the hip. Ready to go, be, and discover together. Their togetherness invites adventure into their lives. And the spectator widower sits alone. Only to catch the scent of what could have been.

So I lean in this morning to Eph 6 and 10.
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength.
O God I need it. We all do.