Friday, 14th of January 2005, 1313h

So here's the story in plain english, not poetic rethoric that no one but this mind understands:

I have been dating Seth for the past 4 months or so. For those of you who are clueless as to who he is, sorry, but he's not for me to explain.

So anyway, on tuesday night we engage in another frustrating arguement with regards to the bible, theology, who Paul was, what he stood for... blah blah blah. we never fight, we just argue, about non-important things... sometimes we argue more then we live.

Wednesday we leave each other, together. I'm honestly glad we did, there was just no more point to the relationship. We made an excellent team, Seth and I. I realise that despite all that I cannot understand, he knows me. And despite all that I am, he can handle me and command a respect that is drastically needed but paradoxically absent in my other relationships. I remember distinctly telling him about how wretched a girlfriend I ususally am. He brought out the best in me.

So we make the team. Without anything to do. It's like giving a neurosurgeon a powerdrill. Nifty useful tool, but absolutely pointless in his hands. That was our story I think.

And now what? I wake up in the mornings without any resolve to do anything, I feel no reason to get out of bed. I find myself in an empty black hole with my back to the light. Meaningless, reasonless and ironically, pointless. I never thought I would be so affected by a relationship. I am by no means depressed or suicidal or anything, but I am hopeless at the moment. Swimming around lost and refusing to be found.

It's not that I can't let go, I just don't want to.

I do not regret what I did. But I regret that it had to be done. For the longest time, I felt darkness. I am resentful toward God I admit, but faith like a child commands choices that hurt and despite the existantial agony, I see the reason. And as usual, it is beautiful.

Seth is beautiful. We were beautiful.

Beautiful in that he taught me to feel, taught me to love without fear, taught me to trust myself, taught me to trust other, taught me to be me. He had his uncanny ability to calm me and to provoke me. He willfully dispelled my worries with his breathing and conjured my pathetic rage by stomping on my clothes. The flirtatious curve of his lips while he muched cookies on my sacred rug, exasperating. I still fail to see how he got past all these defences so intangibly. How? I didn't even let him. Despite the child who lusted after Halo-2 on a 60 inch flat-screen tv, he was probably older then I. Knowing and loving with an unspoken wisdom that still stupefies me. What I took for unawareness or disinterest was really him being, and from there, loving.

The last 4 months have been a lesson to the heart. Seth has taught me to truely be human. Something that he has never been afraid to embrace and understand. In trusting him I've rebuilt my faith in humanity. He earned my trust with great patience and sensitivity, and I learned how to walk with someone, and with myself.

Seth is beautiful.

And now that that part of me is torn away, I marvel at the shards that are left in me, sticking into my spleen like spliters. I can't bare to heal.

But the thing about beauty is that it is uncontainable and uncontrolable. One is beautiful, but one doesn't have beauty. And it still spills over and takes new form, organically and immensely. What do we have now? Still the journey, the next step forward, the coming bend in the road. I am clutching at some invisible hope in this black hole, that at least we're out of the circular track we were on, and we can go forward our own way.

But our own way, isn't necessarily seperately alone.

Monday 17th January 2005, 0008h

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

It's friday evening and I'm aching in the backseat of Curtis' car driving out to Tsawassen ferry terminal for the Navigator's weekend retreat. The sky presents a glorious sunset unspeakable and unimaginable. And the only offering I have is one of bitterness and anger. Seth isn't here with me, in all senses of the word. And without him, beauty holds no meaning. The innocence of a sunset is scorned in my self-abosrbed, willful pain. I lose it.

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for one second you turn back

For a moment in time, God was darkness.

My anger solidfied itself into rejection and I refused, for the seventy-sixth time to turn. I tell God repeatedly throughout the rest of the day that he-had-better-bloody-effing-meet-me-here-in-this-retreat if not, I'd turn back. I'd drag my feeble carcass, crawl through the mud and thump on the door of Seth's heart, for what I know full well, would be a mistake. But I could see no other salvation. The pain wasn't of heartbreak, it was of hopelessness.

Oh no, be strong

Indeed, I scratch out all this in my journal. With a half-breath not daring to believe, no way, could God be as powerful as to pull me out of this. No way would God meet me here, it has all been a figment of my imagination, maybe he doesn't exist at all? But who am I kidding, I could never believe that, and after a disappointing unfulfilling weekend, I'd come home, empty, unloved and clinging to my pathetic excuse for a life - God.

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

Tim stands and speaks truth into my life. I can't quite remember what he tells me, or intellectualize what happens. But I find myself testing the waters of faith precariously again. Would God meet me here? Tim talks of baggage, of what we don't need, but what we take anyway, of what God wants to take from us, to make us truely free.

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

And then he speaks of the gifts that God gave us. Seth. And how in surrender, God doesn't seek to take them away, but to complete. I start to see the impossibility of returning to my relationship with Seth. It was beautiful, it was a gift, and it is over. I have to run free in my race.

But the voice of God comes through this U2 song that Tim plays with the lyrics projected on a screen like a worship song. Walk on.

And I know it aches, how your heart it breaks
You can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

And the tears fall. I force myself down to the feet of God and He brings me, quite gently, to grace. I'm in the middle of room full of university students, tucked between my chin and elbow with conviction, sorrow and joy forcing their way out of my sockets in heaves, that I try to hide. God takes me to a place that I know, that I am familiar with, and that i so desperately need. His presence and His calling. He doesn't dance with me, or laugh. But neither does he cry. He watches me sternly and tells me aptly that it is time, to let go.

Dustin reaches over from the otherside of the sofa and takes my notebook, flips to the page where I had written desperation and writes in obliterating blue: [Phil 3:7 - 4:1]. An invitation to run. On.

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
It�s only time
All that you bear
No more than a feeling on my mind
All that you see
All that you wear
All that you sense
All that you scheme
All you dress up
All that you�ve seen
All you create
And all that you wreck
All that you hate

"I cannot believe that he's taken away this person in my life"
It will be, as before, the most painful and yet, the happiest time of my life.
I am working to welt away the misconceptions about God that I subconsciously live out.

I will believe that God is almighty and can do everything, that he is all wise and may do everything, and that he is all love and will do everything.

God met me. No fireworks, no ra-ra songs, no tongues or crazy-christian-charisma.
But peace, direction and empowerment.

"Count the cost, carry the cross... cut the crap."