I'll admit, this was a long, lonely week in the office for me. I didn't have my buddy staring at me from across the desk and had to suffice with sending her pitiful emails containing one liners that I would have said had she been there. It's okay though, she was trudging through feets of snow in Calgary with her other bestie. I'm okay with sharing her, especially if she leaves the snow there when she comes home. Which she did.

I kept a steady flow of tunes swirling to take the edge off of the quiet though. New favorites and old favorites, anything goes. One day was a full day of Over The Rhine and one song in particular on repeat. It's resonating in me recently because I might be fickle, but I'm not altogether unpredictable. I might be indecisive, but I'm not indulgent or impulsive. These might seem mutually exclusive, but they're not.

My soul has been fully sad and fully happy in recent weeks, months. There have been moments of tears driving to Potsdam, talking on red chairs in the back of the sanctuary, and being with friends around a Thanksgiving woodstove--the tears are joy and the tears are fear. The tears are fullness and the tears are deep heartache, big unanswered questions, and great hopes.

The idea that we are born one thing and we remain unchanged at our core is a concept that I dislike more and more--if this, this deep pulsing thing in the core of me is all I am, what hope is there for any of us? If I am captive to the idea that my personality will always bend to one direction and the joke's on anyone who assumes otherwise, well, the joke's really on me. This concept is liberating for me recently. I have lived for long enough to realize that deep sorrow is not without its inklings of joy and every joy has peripheral pain---we are not fully there, you see. We are not fully realized. To be one thing only is to be cold to the workings of the Holy Spirit, to nudges that send our personality running and surprise us with bravado.

Someone asks me recently how I am and I purge. I ramble for an hour, probably more. I spend all my questions and caveat it all by the promise that I'm OKAY. I'm really OKAY. I'm good, but these are just things I am thinking and wondering and feeling and not really saying. She says it would be okay if I didn't feel okay, that it would be understandable and I'm grateful for that, her understanding. But even more, I'm grateful that men like David existed, that depths and heights are not exclusive from one another and that trust and unbelief coexist because what is there to be convinced of if we first do not doubt?

This is rambling, I know. This is probably a little ambiguous and maybe a little confusing and I'm okay with that. I guess. For tonight I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I'm finding a peace I didn't know existed, it's a peace that's built from the knowledge that Jesus was a man too. Fully God. Fully man. A careful and brave juxtaposition, no better example of the imago dei. I love that. I need that. My fickle, tearful, fearful, hopeful heart needs that.