I want to believe there's meaning here

I often find myself reading before going to bed, whether it's books, blogs, Twitter, or some article that's part of whatever random thread of research I'm following at the moment.  I frequently fall asleep reading.  My Kindle has become a very handy part of this habit as the cover has a pull out light that provides enough light to read in bed and turns itself off when the Kindle has been idle for awhile.  This has pretty much perfected bedtime reading as I am not later awoken in the night by the light.

Last night I was reading Revelations of a Single Woman and I got to the chapter titled "So, Why Aren't You Married?"  Since this question is nearly impossible to answer, I mostly expected wit, wisdom, and anecdotes from this chapter.  What I encountered instead was this.

"You might understand that the world is fallen and often unfair, but that's still not the kind of answer that warms you on a lonely Saturday night.  And if in your heart of hearts you still yearn to be married or have a family, this hard mystery lives, eats, and sleeps with you.

[ . . .]

In retrospect, it was strange what that conversation with Dr. Houston did to and for me.  Somehow, in linking the word 'suffer' to my unintentionally single state, he legitimized something at work in my guts, some pain that I wanted to avoid for very good reasons, like: nothing is more depressing than some old, whiny, lonely spinster; it could be worse (I could be married and wish I weren't); it's not as if there have been no men whatsoever--it has been my choice to say no to a few along the way; and lastly, what would be the point of going there?  To sit around and bellyache?  But in calling it 'suffering,' he was legitimizing a part of me that did ache at sleeping alone every night.  And the simple acknowledgment--having the ache compassionately seen and known by another--did its own quiet, little miracle.  Something in my guts unclenched."

This is the power of sharing our stories because even though I wasn't there and I wasn't a part of that conversation, in having the opportunity to encounter Dr. Houston's insight secondhand I felt something legitimized in me too, something I wasn't entirely aware that I needed.  And I wept.

It was cathartic and freeing.  And I realized that in feeling stuck in a place created by the fallen world, I've gotten stuck in this grief-like process, vacillating between denial, bargaining, and anger (mostly anger) for years.  Just . . . literally . . . years.  But somehow sharing in this experience, this legitimization, has allowed me to mourn and perhaps on some level start to accept that the world is unfair.  Period.  Full stop.

That sort of nebulous non-explanation had been nearly impossible to accept in the past.  I'm the sort of person who believes in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and taking the world by storm.  I believe anything is possible, you can accomplish anything, and fair is only what you make it.  But in this the rules are different and as much as I don't want to accept that, there is something freeing in acknowledging the pain that results in being on the wrong side of unfair.

The world isn't how it was meant to be, and we are straying farther and farther away all the time.  I don't like that.  It grieves me.  It grieves my God too.  I know this because Jesus wept.  I got to hear my brother preach on the story of Lazarus once and how Jesus wept because even though he was going to raise Lazarus, this was not how things were supposed to be.  Death was not a part of the original design of creation.  But due to the fall the natural order of things has been upset.

So here I am.  My dreams, my hopes haven't changed, but something inside me has and I get that "unclenched" gut thing.  This is a tough post to write, let alone actually publish.  It feels too vulnerable, but if someone else's experience has helped me, perhaps mine is worth sharing as well.  If this is something you're struggling with, I'm praying for you.  If you'd like me to pray specifically for you, I'd love to, just leave a comment.

"As lonely as you ever feel, you are not alone."  -- Zach Braff