Prodigal Medic....

This has been a roller coaster week for me. In the short span of merely a few days, I have found myself celebrating new relationships which ignite embers in my soul that have lain dormant for so long. Embers that have been smoldering, smothered out by my own poor choices, chances at easy comfort and cheap intimacy.

I just don’t understand myself, really. I know that I crave relationship. In an email I wrote after watching “Beyond Borders,” I wrote the following:

 

            What about the relational boundaries? When do we leave a relationship? Why do we stay? I understand why she left, why she slept with him. I'm not saying I agree with violating wedding vows. Not in the least. But I get how incompatibility can lead to desire for another. That raw, powerful connection with another soul is... its what I crave, as a human. I believe that Man was created in the image of God. I believe that there are three distance communities spiritually. God in community with God (Father, Son, Spirit) and that Man exists in community with God (through Jesus) and I believe that Man exists in community with Man. I believe that all of these things are meant to be for us to be fulfilled. But that fulfillment, especially on the human-to-human level, can be shallow, it can be deep, and whether shallow or deep, can be fulfilling. However, when there is that connection, it fuels fires, makes our hearts come alive and in full color, brings all our senses and our souls to their potential. (Maybe it even keeps two strangers talking over the computer all night.) That is what I crave. Not the shallow or superficial. That's not me. I want the real, 3-D, Technicolor life, with someone who I don't have to explain my heart to, who allows me to be who I was created to be!

 

Thinking about this again tonight has my head and heart spinning. My dear friend is leaving for war soon. In a week of honest vulnerability, maybe brought about by this stress, maybe brought about by challenges in relationships or loneliness or whatever, there was a sharing of hopes and values and visions for the world and the Church that is rare. It was a week of long emails, late nights on the phone, sharing and praying and talking big dreams. I think that makes her leaving all the more painful and intense.

I respect this person so very much. Her heart is to serve the world’s poor, to being Jesus to them, to literally free the slaves. She has talked a few times about not coming back to the US, and while it is in the context of staying overseas longer to do more ministry, there is also the obvious danger that she enters in the job she holds.

In the meantime, I am left with a hole in my heart, like so many who are civilians as we watch our friends and loved one’s go off to serve. And the combination of this just has me thinking…

How are we supposed to handle this? I honestly have no idea. I usually sit and write with direction, moving steadily towards a goal or concept that I want to reveal. But tonight, I feel lost. I crave the kind of connection that I felt this week. Its so rare, that it stands out and shines like a little beacon, a ray of light that God gives as sign that He is still present and at work in my life. I’ve been told that should be enough.

Maybe I’m greedy. Maybe its all the idea of my weak, western mind that I am entitled to something I have no claim to.  My friend speaks of great goals and laying her life down for those who cant defend themselves. And like many in a life-saving profession, and not just those in the military or public safety, but ministry, healthcare, social work, whatever touches the deepest needs of a person, those are not hollow or empty words. There is considerable risk not only to our physical being, but also to our hearts.

I want to be strong enough to stay my course and to encourage her and send her on her way with prayers of safety and God-blessed protection. And I do. However, I feel a strong sense of loss too. I feel an isolation of experience. I feel an isolation of… an isolation mandated by the importance of insulation of further hurt as one prepares mentally to face untold challenges.

I know that I have been guilty of hurting people by taking this same thing to the extreme. It is a lesson that I hope to carry with me and not making the same mistake again. I think what is happening is necessary. I’ve never been on the other end of a friendship or relationship where I was the one not at risk. I don’t know if this is what I have done in the past. I just don’t know.

I just know that I am supposed to trust Jesus with my friend. I spoke with another amazing friend who also ignites parts of my heart the other day. Her best friend is also leaving for a tour of duty and her life is at risk in other ways. I’ve thought about her a lot this week, my friend, as well as her friend. How do those of us left behind deal?

I hate the sense of loss. I hate that hole in my heart that I feel tonight. I listen to words of songs of significance that make me think of my friend. I read and reread old emails and IM conversations and play back phone calls in my head over and over. I feel like this is one of monumental moments where everything will change. I know that I have to trust my friend to Jesus’ care.

But you know what?

I suck at that. And its killin’ me. Strange how another one of the casualties of this conflict is my faith.

I feel deep loss tonight, and my glass heart is cracking.