of fragility and the way i think God works

Sometimes I think this is how God works on a feeler.

I was out on my back patio last night with a bottle of Nebraska wine and a friend and she said, “You’re being too sensitive.”

She’s not an unsafe person, although I would guess this is an unsafe thing to say. I am sensitive. And I’m okay with that. I’m also okay with owning my feelings and trying to wade my way through them until I figure out what’s on the other side. I’m not planning on becoming hard again, like I used to be, just because it seems like it’s easier. So I’ll take being "too sensitive." And being too sensitive is not the worst thing in the world, as long as I don’t stay down in the mud pit and wallow there. But I do need to stay here long enough to understand what my sadness is teaching me.

This year is a year I’m taking something on for Lent instead of giving something up. Aside from a couple of community service things I’m taking on, I had decided to take on one of the fruits of the spirit: joy

And wouldn’t you know it, yesterday was one of the saddest days I’ve had all year. [Thus the wine.]

Sometimes I think this is how God works on a feeler.

After our second glass and some more talking, plus the blooper reel of Season 8 & 9 of Friends, I went to bed feeling the irony and the unfairness of this. I’m taking on joy for Lent and yesterday I used up a fair amount of tissues. Because I was sad.

It’s not like I was sobbing. That almost never happens. But in those small spaces of every day life, when you realize how much has changed and who’s left and you feel this is a season of realizing who your real friends are... *sigh*

Those small spaces were filled with some tears yesterday.

Then some despair. (Because apparently my new response to abandonment is flight. It used to be fighting, so I don’t know what changed there. (Click HERE to see what I’m talking about.)

Sometimes I think  this is how God works on a feeler.

I’m not saying God made the sadness. Of course not. He isn’t a monster. My sadness is a result of my own sin and those sinning against me. God is not part of that. But placing it on my heart to take on joy for Lent this season, helping me discover the connection between that and the sadness I felt yesterday, teaching me what joy is in the first place, and giving me reasons for that joy? That’s all him.

This is how I think God works on a feeler.

And this Lenten season I am counting on him to help me find the joy.