missing

I've never been one to miss people much.
I'll think of them fondly and wish to see them--I'm naturally quite transient and prone to visits...it's never goodbye, just see-you-soon.
Never that miss that climbs up your throat like hot arms straining their way out of your heart into the tangible realm, bent on reaching through distances between.

But sometimes someone goes away. Too far away. For too long.
Over Christmas I was in the company of home, and that was nice after a month away.
But there's been someone I've been missing. I'd never tell you I loved him. I'd tell you "I'm bored" or "I just miss the times we spent together." I spent some time missing him, spent some thoughts wondering what things might have been if I hadn't run away from him, wondering who we were meant to be to each other.

I wonder this same thing about God all the time--who we're meant to be to each other.
I like to explore a new aspect of that relationship each year or two. I've been through the token Jesus-is-my-bff phase that comes along with being in a youth group. I've walked the path with a curious Teacher who calls me to follow him. I've stood at the back of the proverbial temple, guilty and afraid and wary of approaching a holy God. I've laid physically broken on the altar and in the arms of the Healer and Sustainer of life. The more I think about it, the more I realize this past while has been spent being the whore. Running from the one who wants to love me. I'll trick you all by being friends with everyone...because really all I do is flee from love.

I received Word about a month ago that the time was approaching for a new aspect to be explored. The worst one of all: the bride of Christ.

I imagine this perspective differs between guys and girls (I'd love to hear how you guys perceive that aspect of the divine relationship in your own lives). And I know the bride refers to the church--but I feel there is a certain individual element of it that begs to be acknowledged and experienced as well.

It was a slow start because I've always been so independent and proud and unavailable and never anywhere near being married...how do you explore that aspect of your relationship with the Lord when you've not even explored or genuinely considered the human version? I'm the kind of person who'd be fine with either life--as a single person doing God's work, or as a married person doing his work, however it best suited his Will. So now here I am, in these strange and uncertain new circumstances, trying to trust a Provider to keep me safe and warm and fed and clothed rather than working myself to death to DIY...trying to accept grace and gifts and love and attention rather than deflecting or fleeing from them...trying to come home and tell him I love him rather than sneaking in after he's asleep...trying to be a mother to his children rather than someone fleeting and familiar...


One night as I missed my faroff friend, I wondered if I would miss him worse if we never saw each other again or if we came back together only to be separated by tragedy...what if I let myself love him and he left this realm? Died after only a few years, or months, or days? And it was there in the nighttime of that thought that I realized the deep love and tragic "miss" I have -- had hidden away all this time? -- for my Lover. How we really were meant for each other and how the distance of dimensions has come between us... How somewhere very deep and sacred, there lies embers of a blaze snuffed out too soon--before I had a chance to know... How I walk the streets alone with his Ghost... How I long for his Presence and feel like everything is all wrong without him there... How I am a stranger in an unfamiliar place, waiting and straining for the day we are restored.

And the heat, it rises in my throat, reaching and aching and calling out the speechless things that only Love can communicate...waiting, for Home.