Abandonment

I've only gotten about 5 hours of sleep a night since Sunday night because I've been working on editing almost 1300 photos from the wedding shoot Friday. As the second shooter, I have to get my pics to the main photographer within a week. Not a small order when I have a full time day job and a toddler to chase around after work. The only time I have to do anything is after she goes to bed. And since I'm a person who needs 8-9 hours of sleep, 5 hours over the course of 5 days starts showing itself. A friend of mine tells me on Wednesday that I really outta find some time for sleep...cuz I'm looking pretty dreadful. What are friends for, right? :)

Last night I hit delirium. You know when you are so tired that your dreams become dillusional and disruptive? I can't remember what the dreams where, but I remember feeling like I needed to be somewhere. I also tend to sleep walk, so I did find myself at one point, in the living room...wondering what I was doing there. I think I felt like I'd forgotten something.

When I woke up this morning, of course I was in a daze. Thank goodness it is Friday. Because I intend to do a whole lot of sleeping this weekend. A whole lot of effortless, no time schedule'ness. Just me and my babe. I love her so much, there are just no words to express how full I feel to have been blessed with such an amazing little person. I dream about the amazing person she will become and how incredible it is that I have been entrusted to guide her. (sighhh...) She's so worth the sleeplessness and the perpetual tiredness and exhaustion that I'm learning is just part of single parenthood, though.

Anyways...In the middle of my daze, I also woke up with a deep seated feeling of emptiness in my heart. Lonliness. It bothers me when this happens because I've had so much victory over my lonlies and am confident and content in my singleness. I don't believe I have been called to singleness indefinitely, even though I'd pondered it in the not so distant past. For now, I have been because...here I am.

So, the thinker that I am...it always comforts me when I have an 'answer'. The situation doesn't have to be 'solved', but it helps if I could just know the core...where it is coming from. So I start pondering where the source of this lonliness could be streaming from. It doesn't take long when I get out my journal to find the answer. It's amazing, really...I wonder sometimes if I didn't have a journal or didn't have the ability to write, if I'd ever find clarity in anything. Because invariably, any time I get out my pen and start exercising my hand, out it comes. My stream of consciousness; train of thought; prayers for answers...Truth...is just an ink blob away.

It doesn't take me long today for the word to pop into my mind - Abandonment. This has been an ongoing turmoil I think since birth...but it is getting smaller and smaller. Another issue I will claim victory over. I know my Lord will never leave, abandon, or forsake me and He does complete me. It is the residual dying of thyself that has expectations and attachments to the things of this world; to people, that brings this vulnerability to the surface. I realize that I have placed my expectations and attachments inside this little box of hope that certain people will never leave me/my life. It has brought comfort many times. But the box of hope has holes in it if its attached to people; the expectations become dashed eventually and disappointment ensues and feelings of abandonment follow. People are not ours. We don't get to 'keep' them. They come into and out of our lives. All of them, even our family. If we place all of our eggs into one bucket of 'people' to place our worth and value and hopes and dreams in...the bucket will surely be dropped. People cannot sustain us. They are there to encourage us and lift us up and support us and share life. But people cannot be our life line. If I lose worth because someone has left or because we think they might leave, we have allowed them to define who we are. The only thing I am is a child of God, placed here on this earth to abide in Him, bless others, and live a life that is Glorifying to Him. People are the icing on the cake. Sometimes they are cream cheese frosting and we want to eat them up...by the vat full. :) But eventually the icing runs out. The icing is not the cake. If we just eat icing we'll get sick. It's true of people. If we count on people for everything and don't have something more firm and consistent to sustain us, the icing ceases being sweet and just gives us a bellyache.

So, maybe a crazy analogy...but when we cease depending on people to sustain our emotional needs, we can become full with who we are. We are not empty beings, althought we may feel like it at times. Just in writing all of this and acknowledging the source of the 'void' I was feeling this morning...the void has disappeared and now I feel my heart is overflowing. This is the joy of the Lord. And sometimes, there are no words to express what that feels like. But it rocks, for sure. :O)