God

As an adult, I can't remember exactly when praying became part of my bedtime routine. I started talking to God again while I was married, but I couldn't yet pray at night, for I still shared my bed with an atheist. And so I imagine it began when I moved here, just over 4 years ago. Since that time, my pattern each night has been to head to my bedroom, dab on my Peace & Calming oil, lie down, and talk to Abba for a while.  The majority of the time, I had words of gratitude. Sometimes it was no more than a simple request for a quiet heart and a settled body, enough to get some sleep at home for a change.  Every night, it involved heartfelt prayer for my friends and family, those whose hurts ought to be healed instantly if hurts could be healed by the intensity of my love alone.  I always prayed for myself last, even during the most recent years when my prayers evolved into tears every night. These are desperate, gasping tears for my empty heart, tears for my hopelessness, tears born from the sense of aloneness that permeates every corner of my life.  Always yet, I had hope and the certainty that I was heard.

Now, on good nights, I still find the words for my friends. They are slower to come, and harder to speak, but they still come at times.  My friends assure me that at times, they hear from Him, or they receive a measure of peace that reassures them.  So I try to speak my heart to this God on their behalf.

I can't pray for myself anymore. I haven't been able to for a long time.  I get physically ill, forcing myself to breathe through the panic as I try to find new ways to say the same thing, nauseated with the dread of the forthcoming wasted tears. Maybe if I were more clear, maybe if I said it right, maybe if I signed up for every do-good cause at church and jumped up and down in the aisles, I would be heard.  Maybe then my own heart would matter.

See, I didn't just pray all those years; I was mindful to do my part, at least as best I knew how. I was sure to appreciate each opportunity and provision I could conceive of, and strove to live every moment in awareness and gratitude. I enjoyed my freedom and the gift that I know my life is.  I tried new things and met new people, which is much harder for me than anyone would imagine.  I determinedly walked into classes, into church groups, into running events, into seminars, into every new encounter, with an open heart, looking for a divine purpose and toward the relationship I have achingly waited for.  More importantly, I have striven to regain and to live from my heart, giving away some of the love inside that wants so badly to be poured out.

I've long ago explained what it's like for me to walk through the baby section of a store like Target. This has evolved now into an inability to attend weddings or baby showers. I can barely hold a child; in fact I bit my tongue until it bled the other night as I reached out to pick a 13-month old patient up from my cot. The pain kept me from crying in front of my partner, the family, and the hospital staff. In my heart I asked his mother, "What did you do to deserve this that I'm not doing?"  Out shopping a few months ago, I had to hide in a bathroom stall, crying for ten minutes after seeing a pregnant woman walk by.  Today, it was all the "Moms on the Run" at the race this morning, their husbands and children cheering for them at the finish line. It was the pregnant-and-glowing sales associate at DSW. It was the stranger in the SUV waiting next to me at the stoplight with a wedding ring on her finger. Through my tears and my closed window I asked her aloud what it felt like to be chosen and wanted.

I have come to believe that I ought to have stayed married. In fact I think I've come to believe that this is my punishment for giving away the only shot I was going to be given. Anything is better than facing life alone, than never being touched, than never coming home to someone, than having no one, really, to rely on but yourself. At least in my husband, as unloving and detached as he was, I had someone present. I may have been miserable, but I wasn't alone.

As an atheist, my former husband has never asked my God for a single thing, especially not the gift of a new wife and child. Yet he has been blessed with those things.  So many others, including strangers and dear friends, also have no relationship with or interest in this God of mine. It has never entered their minds to ask Him for the blessing of relationship, and yet they also receive this precious gift.

And then there is me, who has pled for years now for someone to share my heart and life with. Me, who has reached the point of asking only for hope, for just a day's worth of patience, if this waiting is because I am being prepared for this future partner of mine, or he for me. Me, who has almost managed, truly, to arrive at a place where I can accept never being a mother. Me, who in utter defeat now pleads only for him to make Himself known to me. Forget about entering my heart, Abba, just come into the room. Let me know You're here with me in my pain. I ask only that You let me know that I'm not alone, that I am not only talking to myself every night.

God is not making Himself known to my empty heart. It seems not to matter who I am, how I live, what I ask for, how great or small my faith, how much love I give when I feel I have no more to offer, or which of my deepest desires I strive to detach from. I don't know how to ask anymore, and I realize that I no longer want to. Who wants to talk to this so-called God of blessings, who gave my heart a desire that is not to be fulfilled? To a God who claims to speak to us, and yet remains silent in the moments I can no longer breathe?