Let me climb under your skin or let me in..

I want to come in, Mister, you know I'd hang on every word.
I'd wrap around you, but you've surrounded yourself in thorns,
now I can't touch you without bleeding.
You say that I'm the one walking away, always running away from love,
yet I'm here still, silently bursting, like a bubble, I'm so fragile,
waiting for the word, but there are no words left in you,
if you only knew
how easy it'd be just to fight for me.
You say you're fighting, that you're tired of doing this dance,
stepping toward me as I pull away,
but I've been pulling you back
to me all this time and you've been turning your head,
and I can't have your eyes
so close to mine if they won't look at me.
They say a miracle starts with the beat of a heart
but mine has beat itself out waiting for one love to take it in.
You've been sleeping, I've been dreaming of you, of the you you used to be when you used to look at me like I was all there was,
but somewhere along that line you lost it, that interest, didn't you?
HEY Mister, you know everything changes, before I knew what had been done,
before you knew it I'd come undone,
now, is there anything left to do?
I can't spend another minute convincing myself you love me
when my heart's convinced you don't want me,
that you've wanted someone else all along.
Still, I can't let go of what I know,
the way you used to hold me and never wanted me to go,
you said you never would, now that's all you can do for me,
either be my king or let me leave...
But you're letting me go so easily.

It's the hunger.

Sam is here tonight. We've watched the first disk of OTH (if you don't know what that stands for, you are missing out on some true pleasure in television-watching.) But I can't stay up watching how life should play out; all I can do for right now is write about how life doesn't. It just doesn't.

I have a "book" I am supposed to review for Hensley, and I don't know when the due date is, but I'm sure I should start working on it. The only problem is that it is (ideally) a soon-to-be devotional for married couples, and at this time in my life, I know nothing about marriage.

There have been a lot of people working on interventions lately, for Jake and I, trying to save us, but I'm having trouble figuring out what they're trying to save. I can sort of see it, as if it's off in the distance up in front of a car in a morning fog, but it's not quite clear. How can anyone save something they don't really know? They might have the want-to, but unless you know how to save it or what's really threatening it, how can you have any chance at being it's hero?

The appeal of Jesus for some is that he "saved" us from our sins before we even existed, before he ever knew who we were because we hadn't even been born yet, but we're told often, as a deterant from believing that we're completely alone and uncared for, that God knit us together, that he knew us before we knew us, and we're taught as part of a Christian education that Jesus was with God from the beginning, that God is omnipresent, and that Jesus is God. If all that we've been taught is true, how could he not have known, from the beginning, exactly what he'd be saving? Those who are attempting, lately, to do the saving in our lives claim to be followers of Jesus, yet they know nothing about what they're so determined to save.

I wish I didn't see all of the between-the-lines bullshit, I really do. But I do. I was taught from an early early age that the between-the-lines exists, and after living so long in a life where the lines couldn't be trusted, all I know now is what reveals itself to me in between the words people say and claim, and I can't help that. Now, when people speak with tenderness, I see the hypocrisy and self-gain from their "care", and I really don't think it matters how long or how hard someone fights to form the words, I will always see the lines for what's between.

I don't even know who or what needs to be saved these days. All I know is that there is no touch of a loving savior and no intervention worth believing, not here.

One night,

Jacob was feeling particularly rotten about our choice.. and to lay it out there, by "choice" he means: the day we partook in the kind of sex that produces a fetus that then must be accounted for to the point of an entire life recon resulting in marriage and adulthood aka a tornado or "the mistake" or "their sin" or whatever verbiage you'd have in mind to attach to the ever-lengthening label on our lives.





Anyway, my response was this:





"We're not God's Plan B."





What I meant was: It's not as though God had a Plan A, aka life before "the mistake", and then when we had sexual intercourse he was all like 'Oh no! What to do..what to do...? Well, I suppose I'll have to do this (Plan B).'





I'm sorry..I don't know everyone's theology, but mine says that to think God has Plan Bs is completely inconsistent with believing he's omniscient and omnipotent, and aren't those characteristics the foundation of what we believe about him? Are we supposed to pick and choose which things we are to believe about our Creator?





When we look at it like this, simplified & amplified, sure.. it seems silly to believe conflicting things about God, but the thing is, people, we do it anyway. All the time. I mean..I see it everywhere. We walk around proclaiming all these truths, when the reality is that, added together, they don't add up to Truth. He can't be in control while at the same time onlooking with tears in his eyes about what we didn't let him control. He either is, or he isn't, and I choose to believe that he is.





God wasn't scared or surprised when we did what we did and, in fact, I'm not entirely sure he wept. Maybe he wept for how we felt, how afraid we were, and the pain we felt when others couldn't even look at us because of our sin, but he knew. He saw it coming. He had this planned, because he doesn't need a Plan B. Jacob isn't some guy I got stuck with and we just happen to be making it work because of our discipline and prayer and commitment to one another.





Why do I say that? Well, take a look at this realistic assessment and decide for yourself..





Discipline: We don't pay bills on time because we're too busy watching episodes of scrubs or grey's anatomy. We leave the stove on overnight sometimes because we forget to turn it off after we cook up our midnight snack of frozen chicken wings. I don't come home until 4 a.m. most nights, and Jake doesn't always brush his teeth. Oh, and we've both got tires forming around our middles.





Prayer: I don't pray. I don't believe it to be necessary until I do, and then it is. Jake might pray, but not often enough to hold up my end too, and we don't pray together.





Commitment: We've both cheated in our own ways. Yup. How's that for honesty?





So..what do you think? You think our marriage is still intact (and not only that, but our love for each other, too?) simply because we've been doing what it takes to make it work? There is no other explanation of our current relationship than: God wants it. He wants it and he wants our daughter and he wanted it from the beginning and he's making it happen. Maybe we help him out, make it a little easier, every now and then by doing what he says, but ultimately..this was no surprise to him. He is in control.





We're not God's Plan B.





And I really wish everyone would stop looking at us like we are.

Stalling

Yes, I'm stalling. I don't want to finish this book nor write it's review. Some writer, right?

I think I need to talk something out first. Like this:

I have friends who walk around saying one thing and doing another, and I think that'd be fine, except that it has been affecting me personally lately, and maybe that'd be fine, too, because I could probably get over it, but when it affects the people I love, like Jake, it's just not okay anymore, because then I'm left feeling like I'm the one who harmed him, and I never want to be that person (though I know that I am sometimes..but if I'm going to harm him, let me do it myself--don't do it for me. I do a mighty fine job on my own, thanks.)

Anyway, this is vague and weird, I realize, but it's been bugging, and I'm hoping it can serve as some kind of warning to those who've been doing this..hopefully they'll know who they are.

I might seem like I enjoy being walked on, but did you ever think that maybe it's not that I like it, but that I don't feel it?? Maybe I just don't let myself feel the pain of being trampled--maybe I've felt it for so long that it doesn't feel much like pain to me anymore, but when you walk on someone I love, you're cutting right into the heart of me, and I don't just let that happen, ok?

Fine, I'll admit it, you don't have to be careful with me, but that doesn't make me weak, it makes me calloused...but mess with those I love...and you'll see how truly strong I can be.

(end rant..)