desire -- AGAIN

This whole "desire" thing refuses to die. Thought I was pretty much done with it a couple of years ago, but here it is again. It's like one of those never-ending songs--you can crank up the radio in a panic attempt to keep it from getting stuck in your head, but in the end, it just does not--shut--up.

Kev held up a book at a store and asked if I'd read it. Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers. Never heard of it. Who wrote it? John Eldredge. Another "desire" book? I picked it up and perused it. This is the same book. He just renamed it. I wonder why...

A week later I find myself rereading it. Some of the same lines I'd underlined last time still say something to me, along with new lines. I feel risings of emotion on every other page. I don't like this. I don't want this. I'm doing this again.

I remember back to a time when Jewelee and I walked step for step, not because our experiences were similar but because we shared what we called "DNA of the soul." We were so like-souled that what she felt, I felt. The sentence she began, I could finish. A subtlety in someone's tone, we picked up at the same exact moment, and with one look we conducted an entire conversation.

All this came at great cost, however. Others were outsiders, not excluded purposely, but simply because they did not share the "one-and-a-half brains" that were ours. That was not the great cost though. It was the loss of her husband in a tragic road accident. It seemed he'd just been starting to come around after a lifetime of utter stubbornness, starting to soften just a smidge and consider what God might want to be saying to him. The reeling loss left her in a kind of free fall. But we grabbed hands and held on, knowing we would do this together, no matter what. She tried to excuse me several times, but like Sam Wise, I made a promise, "and I intend to keep it."

This is the life I have. Is it the life I hoped for? Is this the marriage I dreamed of? Am I the person I want to be? It keeps coming back to that never-ending line from that never-ending song, "This isn't how it's supposed to be..." Lines in the book like "I hate hoping" and "I'm starting to hate hope" resonate. Anesthesia--of all types--has been a stupid tool for too long. I need to grow up. It's time. But the shmoo inside wants to stay nestled under the covers behind doors that only open when they must. What's so ultimately impossible to reconcile is that I don't have a life that comes close to being bad! I've even been accused of having "your perfect little life." HAAAA!!! If they only knew what it's like to live inside my head, they'd not only apologize, but they would genuflect!