Story of my life

Im just going to put myself out there on this one. What better, safer, place to do that then the internet right? haha Maybe not so much but I just really feel the need to get real on this one.

This morning I came home from work really tired and it was rainy and I had to go to a silly inservice meeting for work in like an hour and still needed to shower but i just wanted to steal a few minutes of comfort and curled up on my bed and closed my eyes. My thoughts wandered to a Facebook status I "liked" the night before (oh world). The quote was, "If you want to know where your heart is, pay attention to where your mind goes when it wanders."(thanks Christina) This stuck in my head because my mind has been wandering in a not so productive, same direction for a good long time now. It usually lands somewhere between wishing my life was similar to how it was about 2 years ago and wishing/ missing somebody to be really really close with. Preferably of the male variety, preferably for forever. Which typically leads me to know in my mind that my heart is really just still longing for intimacy with my maker, the lover of my soul. But sometimes the thoughts just linger on that gift that God sometimes gives of a human companion, the gift he also sometimes takes away.

As my mind drifted, my eyes wandered to a really awesome painting I have in my room. Its very colorful and is just a simple scene of two people, a guy and a girl, walking next to each other down a lit path. The really special friend who picked it out for me told me it was a story, or had a story in it or to it. I don't remember if I ever actually heard the story that he saw in it but since then i think I've put my own words to the painting and named the characters and always knew it was about us and what our time together was all about.
 Anyway, this looking all lasted maybe like two minutes, just long enough to remember just how much I miss that story and enter a conversation with God about it. I just kinda said it my heart, "It stinks that this story had to end. Its like stopping a movie in the middle without ever seeing the ending, or having to put a really good book down because you have to go to school or work or something, and then coming home and going to pick it up again because you've been waiting all day but finding its not there anymore. Or just writing a story but never finishing. It doesn't feel right, it has never felt right every time I had a little picture in my mind of life with someone, a whole epic tale of how things were and how we could walk into the unknown future together, every time those different pictures have come to an end before even hitting the climax.

I don't know if anyones tracking with me haha (sometimes it'd be nice to just say things simply just like they are without little metaphors and roundabouts ) Im just talking about relationships. Every relationship is different and they start from somewhere different and lead into little moments and shared interests and words. They take on a shape and become a certain way and then that person means something to you in a special way because of the unique combination of you and him and the time of life and the place and the situation together. Relationships become stories. Not just between guys and girls but just normal friendships too. Your interactions together with another person paint a picture and write a story. We are relational people and these stories come to mean more to us than anything else in life.  Sometimes one story will weave itself in and out of my entire life. Sometimes one story will only live for a season. And sometimes stories will end. Or they don't end and they just fizzle out or disappear or get all fuzzy and unclear until they don't even seem quite real. And thats the feeling I'm addressing right now. A broken, kind of lost story. Missing a resolution I guess.

Maybe I have it a little wrong. Maybe each life is like a story and relationships are more like chapters in that story..the story of my life, or your life. And maybe some chapters end as they transition nicely into a new chapter, or maybe the transition is a little rough but that just adds some twists and turns in the story and they are soon resolved as a new chapter begins with new characters and a slightly new direction. Right now though, I feel like a chapter has ended but without a complete resolution and a new chapter has begun but seems to just be going and I can't seem to get a grasp on its direction or its story or even its characters. The continuation I had in mind and even the ending seem to have become quite unrealistic, leaving me pretty clueless and just asking, where the heck is this story going? I feel a little lost in my own story.
Sometime around that thought is when I realized that it was never really my story to write or to own. Maybe it has never been all about me and maybe these relationships or times in life that I get stuck on are pictures of a greater story that I am a part of whether I realize it or not. A story that God has been writing since the beginning of time. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been sharing a story of love and closeness with each other for all of eternity and then they decided to create a place where they could share their love and creativity so they created characters to enter the story. God wrote a new chapter in His story, He wrote mankind into the story of God. Each person would be an irreplaceable character in relating to his creator and lover and sharing the story with others. Each person would have their own story and it would be about relationship with the Father and have different chapters along the journey of sharing that relationship and love with different people and places and purposes that would come in and out of life.

Looking up at the painting again I remember that even that story, or that chapter, was focused on walking towards and with the author of life. And maybe that's why it was still hanging on my wall, not to make me sad and stuck but to remind me that even if the characters have changed and the location and time shifted, this story is still headed in one direction. The path is still lit and it still leads to the way everlasting, to know God and make him known along the way. The blank pages I see ahead, and even presently, don't have to be scary if I am not the one in charge of filling them alone. In fact I think there is already a new chapter in the heart of God that is ready to be written, that is being written, and I am invited to discover our story in the same moments as He puts it down.
When people ask me what I think I'm doing or where I'm heading I get nervous and rack my brain for an answer that just doesn't seem to be there. But actually I know what this story is about and I even know the end, as John Thurlow puts it, "I know the end of the story, Ill come up from the wilderness, leaning on my Beloved. " I don't know why the end of one chapter and the beginning of another seems so crazy blurry and unclear this time around, I don't know why that confusion and restlessness has been around so long, and why its so hard to fight against and to find my footing and steady my gaze and my heart again. But I do know the end, I do know that at the edge of this wilderness ill come up and ill be leaning on my Beloved. I know that He is my light and my salvation, He is the strength of my life. He is the author and finisher of my faith. And I know if anyone can pick up this story and finish what has been started, it's Him.

Maybe to lean my heart into His and extend my faith into Him and put all of my hope and trust in Him is to surrender the blank white pages to His ideas and His love. And to believe that the tale that unfolds there will bring all the desires of my heart for closeness and wholeness to completion as I just delight in His wisdom and truth and goodness and beauty.