I spent several lovely hours catching up with a friend this afternoon. There is something so comforting about being able to relax in being known. We have been friends for over a decade. She knows me – knows me from my old, single days. We sat at her dining room table and drank lemonade and I felt deep peace as I looked around at the familiar surroundings. I hadn’t been to her house in a year or two, but there – the same shower curtain! the sofa we sat on to watch endless episodes of The Bachelor!
I was safe and at home and could drop my mask for a while.
I’m lonely.
Motherhood is hard.
I miss my friends.
Work is boring, but I don’t have the energy to change.
She asked me a question. Back when I was single, when we would talk about longing to be a wife & mother, I described feeling a hole inside. She wanted to know if it’s still there.
I have been pondering that for days.
At first, the hole seemed to be filled. The whirlwind of wedding and being a newlywed and finding out several weeks later that the baby was coming – these were all things that seemed to soothe the ache. But now? I think that a husband and kids might have filled in that hole (a bit) but they ripped a bunch of new ones in my heart and soul. The pains and aches are not ones I ever expected, but there are there, just as real and driving as the ache for marriage/motherhood had been.
My heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.
-St Augustine
So. There it is. I am searching for the answers in places that cannot supply them. The real problem is finding out what can. My concept of God shifts & slips through my fingers, fluid and slippery as a minnow.