Lessons in Silent Moments

It's hard to fight these feelings when it feels so hard to breathe...

I've had this post sitting in my drafts for three days now, cooking. And I hate that.

For me, writing is not only a career choice but an outlet. I've never been especially eloquent in my speech -- I'm about as casual as it gets -- and thinking too much only tends to exacerbate things. In writing, I can take my feelings, focus them, and then be done with it.

But for the first time in ages, I find myself totally at a loss for words.

But we don't need to rush this...let's just take it slow...

In the past six weeks, I've been thrown on my back by a relationship that is moving much faster emotionally than I could have ever anticipated. It's pretty terrifying, if only because I'm acutely aware that this is not in my hands and never was.

I don't think I've ever been so completely disarmed by anything before...

On day one, not sure what else to do, I surrendered all of this without reserve to God, telling Him to do whatever He needed to do to make this work. Man, I really need to start thinking before I pray that prayer again. ;)

Just a touch of the fire burning so bright, I don't want to mess this thing up, I don't want to push too hard...

This weekend, He needed to teach me a lesson in humility.

Sitting on my boyfriend's bed and playing with a thread unraveling from the bottom of my sock, I was trying not to let the heavy, noisy silence between us drive me crazy.

I kept waiting for him to break it, but no, he wouldn't. He was at the moment a bit too shy. And I was too broody.

Then, God arrested me. I had just thought to myself that I felt entitled to more than what, on that day, he was willing to give.

Everything you have is a gift from Me. You are entitled only to what I've given you, nothing else. And you can either wallow in your selfishness, or be thankful for what's in front of you. What do you choose?

And just like that, my heart changed. In the span of three minutes I learned the true value of holding another person's dignity up over your own expectations ... how precious that is, and how insanely, stupidly lucky I am.

I chose to rest in that: the mind-boggling realization that it is possible to be intimate only on emotional terms. I'm not sure if I quite know how that works yet. But I do know it starts with laying down my pride and caring for someone not because of what they do, per se, but for who they are.

As my friend Peyton put it so eloquently in a text to me on the way back home: "There's something so incredibly beautiful about falling in love with the personhood of another ..."

You know what? I think she's onto something.