the walking dead...

My sister gave me a book for my birthday recently. (huh, with just the writing of the word “birthday” it occurs to me that maybe that’s the whole reason for this blog. Maybe it’s part of the reason for the self-reflection.) Anyway, the book is called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It’s about one woman’s journey to finding contentment in the everyday blessings from God—amidst the inevitable suffering. It’s pretty incredible. I want to start following her blog.

She writes:

“It’s the in between that drives us mad. It’s the life in between, the days of walking lifeless, the years calloused and simply going through the hollow motions, the self-protecting by self-distracting, the body never waking, that’s lost all capacity to fully feel—this is the life in between that makes us the wild walking dead.”

Wow. That stopped me dead in my tracks. I don’t want to live in the in between. I hate the in between. I don’t want to just go through the motions. And gosh, do I know about self-protecting by self-distracting. We are capable of distracting ourselves from our deepest pain. We run from pain, sometimes by running to the unhealthiest of things. I know I do. I use all kinds of things to distract from my own pain. I’ve mentioned that I’ve recently gone through a break up. I’ve certainly been in pain over it and I’ve so desperately wanted to run to everything I can think of to distract myself from the pain—I’ve wanted to drink, I’ve wanted to find someone else in a hurry to jump into another relationship with, I’ve wanted to use food to numb the pain, I’ve wanted to shop to forget the hole that I feel so deeply. (Here’s the part where you either just stopped reading this blog or you started relating to it.) So, I’m doing something different…something out of my comfort zone. I’m writing about it. I’m painting. I’m praying. I’m praying for the desire to run to God with this hurt. It’s hard to run to the stillness. It’s hard to do something different. But then I have to remind myself…it’s better than the in between. It’s better than the walking dead person I would be if I ran back to old patterns of behavior. Old patterns of emptiness. So, today, I choose to trust. I choose hope.

“Your face, Lord, I will seek.” Psalm 27:8.