More Common than a Comet

Things shake, lose strength, and my hands have forgotten how to hold on. I don't mean that metaphorically--lately there's something wrong with my peripheral nervous system, and it's rather annoying.
Such are the unsung effects of who I am.
But enough. I must keep my brain moving with happier things.
I realize that almost nothing is in my control, but it feels like they should be, so my body is aching and groaning with frustration. My heart won't sit still. I can't make more money appear. I can't bring Andrew home sooner. I can't make my hands work or my feelings balance, simply out of sheer will. Believe me, I fight as hard as I can.
I get angry sometimes, because Andrew can't pour himself out for me. No, that's not accurate--I get angry that I get so drained that I can't take care of him, and he can't take care of me because he's also drained beyond measure, and so I'm angry at the whole situation, not him. I told Dad that it feels like my bones have been scraped out.
I don't blame Andrew. I don't blame the war, or the Army. That's just where we are right now, and I don't mind it. I don't know what I blame. I blame myself, I suppose. I hate that I can't be strong. I hate that I can breathe and calm myself and psyche myself up and muster every ounce of courage I have, but then someone looks me in the eye, and I fall to pieces.
I've ended up crying in front of two different people at work today. I feel terrible. I feel like I'm letting them down, because these are people I love, and this is a place that I love, yet--my insides are abandoning them, and I hate it.
I hate being so weak. I hate that everyone sees me weak. I hate that everyone else has to pick me up. I hate that people suffer because I'm weak. They worry for me, they fear for me, they stand around feeling helpless as they watch me wasting away. They blame themselves because they can't help me (a feeling I understand, as its one I often carry when I see Andrew suffering).
This is the second time I've responded in anger to this. The first time was last semester, when I needed to be at my best. It was my last semester, for god's sake! I was excited, confident, brave--and then I was eaten away from the inside out. But I wasn't sad, or scared, or nervous like before. I was freaking pissed. Furious. Why the hell do I have to do this yet AGAIN? That angry energy did not bode well for my nerves, but at least it kept my eyes clear, for the most part.
Now I'm angry again. Anger, and anguished. My hands refuse to grasp. I drop things, misjudge distances and hit my arms and hips and feet on everything as I try to walk and move. I've honestly been screaming at God a fair bit. Not blaming Him, but pleading with Him. I hate the animal sound of my own cries.
I can't show Andrew what I'm going through. How could I? We talked Saturday night, and just before he got online, I prayed, as fiercely as I could, "God, please, please, let things be okay with him. I can't help him today. I need him to help me. Please, PLEASE."
But last week, it turns out, was one of the worst weeks his unit has had in a long time. Horror, death, destruction, they finally walk back onto their base, dirty, torn to shreds, and hello, emails from wives--I can't do this anymore. I want a divorce. And full custody of your children. So, yeah... you get to come home from war in a few months... come home to nothing and no one.
Andrew was a wreck. He was watching the men he loved suffer, watching their hearts break at a time when they needed their hearts to be strongest. It was almost no comfort for him to be reassured that I would not leave him. The pain wasn't his, and it couldn't be healed by me.
I did what I could. Luckily, we were only chatting. It's easy to type, "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry" over and over as he spilled his burdens. It would not have been easy to look him in the face or hear his voice. With the chat at least, I could weep and weep and weep on my end and he would never know.
Of course, majestically, he recovers so quickly, and because of the amazing man he is, he can turn around with a day or two and cheer me up and, if nothing else, give me certainty. Of everything in the world, of everything in me, of all that is in turmoil (whether in truth or in my perception)--I know he loves me. Even if he can't be here to hug me, or put a bandaid on my pain, he shows me that he loves me. He can be in the worst of moods, suffering through the worst of memories, angry and bitter and railling against all the evil, but he'll manage to drag himself through the thickets and say, "I know you probably don't feel it, and I kinda don't feel anything right now, but you know I love you, right?"
That's something. That's a huge something. It sounds pretty sacrilegious, but I don't feel even as certain of God's love right now (I know He loves me, but I don't FEEL it, ya know?), because part of me thinks He just wants to piss me off right now.
But Andrew's love IS a part of God's love. Andrew belongs to God, I belong to God, God gave us each other. Our love is a reflection of Him. So maybe, when I feel loved by Andrew, that's God's way of showing me His love, reaffirming that there is good to be had, and He is the one who brought it.
My favorite verse for a long time has been James 1:17---every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
There's so much promise in those short words. Every good thing is from God. God is the originator of all light, of all good. He does not change from His good ways.
But the problem right now is, I don't feel any ways. I don't feel good ways. I don't feel bad ways. I feel like nothing has a way to it.
But I'm loved. That's a start. I guess the paths and ways will be found later.

Rings of Glory, Sands of Silver

It's strange to think that I've not written in this blog in almost three months. I suppose I've had alot going on, what with graduating, and ... yeah, that's about all the excitement. Let's attempt to recap, in a decorative and highly charming manner.

Worldviews brought me to an amazing place in my life. By the end of the semester, I felt so close to those previous dumbasses in my class, and on my final exam, when I was asked the question "what impacted you the most about this class?"-- my answer was the dude who actually annoyed me most. We'll call him Jimmy-Jimmy. He was super conservative, and I disagreed with him every class, and once or twice, he got frustrated and told me that I was exhausting. But I was SO challenged by him, and, in the end, when I looked past his worldview, and really tried to understand him, I realized what a solid, good man he is. It was such a revelation. The final paper for that class ended up being nigh on... 36 pages, I believe, and I cracked through so many of my heady, rational, fix-it-smartly-and-handle-it-without-emotion tendencies. I realized that, as my dad has told me a thousand times before, I shouldn't doubt in the dark what God showed me in the light. What is human intelligence and wisdom compared to the wisdom of God? Is that in the Bible? Don't even bother looking for it, you won't find it anywhere.

My thesis turned out to be the most important piece I'd ever written in my life. I didn't mean for it to be so important. I thought I would throw together something, in a decorative and highly charming manner. But on the beach in October, I realized that I wanted to tell one of the stories of my dear grandfather--and I wept as I trod through the waves, and went back and wrote the entire short story in three sittings. That story become an honored shrine of memory to one of the best men I've even known, and I'm unspeakably proud of what I did. The fact that it made a good thesis was immaterial; yay for me, I passed and graduated. But the real accomplishment was the reflection of my grandfather.

So I graduated. Summa Cum Laude. The college president complimented my "bling" as I shook his hand and took my diploma. I'd like to think he was commenting on my decorative and highly charming medals and honors cords and scholarship pins and such--yes, that was a blatant plug for my own awesomeness-- but, in truth--I think he noticed the dogtags I was wearing above everything else. As a retired Navy dude, Dr. Struble rocks the respect.
My family was kinda... really proud of me. I'm kinda...really proud of me. But it still hasn't completely sunken in yet, you know? Everyone tells me that I'll feel it for sure, once school starts in a few weeks and I'm not there. Sniff.

So, yeah. I'm thinkin'...grad school. I'm thinkin'...within the year. I'll give it time and thought and prayer and counsel amongst my lofty few (read: Da, Mum, Cait, Jeremy, and Andrew, pretty much), but I know for certain where God wants me--St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. I'll basically spend two years reading Aristotle and trying to make sense of it. H-AMAZING. But, again, there is much to confer about. Applying, money, timing, moving, work, a place to live, etc. I'm working on my application, but I'm not making any definite plans til I can talk to Andrew. The fact is, yar, I am waiting for him. But the other fact is, I don't have to putter about in the same old job in the same old city whilst I wait. But the third fact is, I don't want to be in the middle of a semester when he gets out of the Army and have to say "Sorry, can't come road trip with you-- gotta discuss Proust."
Another fact: these are still all my mental brain-things inside my head. Andrew tends to have this nifty way of seeing a situation or idea, and finding this occam's razory answer that makes me feel both stupid and relieved. But he's very patient with my little acronym-forgetting peabrain, and that's one of the one-thousand-and-one Arabian reasons that I love him.

Speaking of which, he'll totally be here in about 29 days. I can't believe the first half of the deployment is almost over--so much has happened here, and so much has happened there. His unit has lost so many men. I've watched Andrew, albeit sporadically and from far away, go through the stages of grief. The denial phase was fun, before they lost anyone, and while it was still a bit of an adventure. The anger was hard, because he turned very inward and became annoyingly selfless (as in, he was telling us not to send him stuff or write so much, because it probably was so inconvenient for us...{what a dumbass}), and honestly, he was pretty uncommunicative. That was unbelievably difficult. That was when I found myself crying constantly, and questioning constantly--but thank God--that was also when I wrote my Worldviews paper and discovered (to my chagrin, I managed to weep about it in class) that I was doubting in the dark.

I think Andrew may be in the bargaining stage right now, the whole "just let me live until mid-tour, so I can see Chelsea and my family one more time" thing. Being as resilient as he is, he's pretty optimistic, I think. But also, his unit got pulled back to the big base, and they got to stop dying for awhile over Christmas. He's lost so many friends... I've also been agonizing about how to help him. It's been driving me half mad, because I feel so inadequate to fight against the monumental brutality of the things he's suffering. But as always, Mister God was right there, and in the middle of my agonizing, He said to me oh-so-gently, "Andrew was mine first. I will heal him. I love him more than you do, and I always care for those of My household. I will heal him."
So here I am. Counting down days, filled with plans that can't be settled yet, but still happy. I feel... like I've relearned how to trust, lately. It's a peaceful thing.

New thoughts

I got a letter from Afghanistan yesterday, which is about my favorite thing in the universe. As I was about to leave my parents house (I always stop by after work because I'm right there, and since my little brother is just moved out, my mum is rather lonely), when I got a text message from my older brother (to whom my mail is still being sent because of address changes and such), saying "You've got a Cook letter!"
Of course then, I shrieked most fetchingly and leapt into my car, all the while smiling and trying to listen to mum as she told me "don't speed! it'll be there! be careful! oh dear..." It seemed to take hours to get to my brother's apartment in Asheville (I still think of it as my apartment...sigh). My heart kept spinning as I reached each visual marker... the highway... the junction to 240...the expressway... Charlotte Street exit--oh my gosh--..finally the road to the development...I halted in front of the apartment and literally jumped out of the car and ran up the walk. When the door was locked, I hyperventilated and knocked about ten times. After a moment, Phil opened the door and he laughed at me as I slithered past him and ran towards the stack of mail I saw on the dining table.
Amazon, Amazon, something from Montreat that I've already gotten, junk mail and then---there it was. A letter. A nice, thick letter, full of pages. My pulse was tingling in my fingers. I looked up at Phil and squealed a bit, and he laughed at me again while I tried to be polite and make some conversation--"how are you? is Ben settled? kthnxbai."
I truly did consider the possibility of waiting until I got home to read the letter. For about 10 seconds, I thought I would give this occasion the import it deserved, and wait til I could sit down on my deck with some dinner and a cranberry Mike's---wait til I could be calm and devote all my attention to every word that he wrote to me.
Yeah, that didn't happen. Before I was back in my car, I had pulled open the envelope and snatched out the letter. By the time I was seated, but before I had closed the door, I had read his familiar greeting--"Hi babe!"--and by the time the door shut, I was crying.

Sometimes I wish he weren't such a good writer. I think it would be easier if I loved a soldier who was more like the Army-grunt stereotype, who just wrote things like "How are you? It was super hot today. I missed you alot." Instead I love the soldier who writes things like this:

"It's always a surprise when that moment comes... that moment you've been preparing for but never ever could really expect. Our base was attacked today. One minute I was walking down the dusty, scorching streets, looking at the dirty sun-soaked signs posted on the stone walls that turn the roads into tunnels, and the next---that moment. Those sounds, that energy and impact that happened so quickly it was like my body was metal and the sand was magnet, I hit the ground so fast. It was beyond sensing. The fire, the debris, the screaming, the death. When finally those automatic actions we take for granted restarted, when I was able to see and move and focus again, you were the only thing my mind could locate to keep me sane...to think that 30 seconds ago, I was standing where the bombs hit and it could have been me. But it wasn't, not yet. It may seem strange, but I suddenly understand that my life is not my own. If the time came that I had to give my life the way others did today, I would do it gladly. My life is not mine. My moments are not mine."

Then he closed the letter, 3 pages later, with two sentences that I had to read twice, because I thought I had misread them at first--"Every day I get more tired of being your boyfriend--I want to be your husband."

I don't have it in front of me, but I've almost got it memorized by now, so I think that's about 85% verbatim. I cried so hard after reading that letter. I'm not sure what I was feeling. Not sadness, exactly. Sorrow that he had to suffer through what he did. Agonizing joy and relief that he was alright. Terror, because it finally, truly, one hundred percent sunk in how far away he is, and how dangerous his world is. But more than anything--I think I felt gratitude. Gratitude that the Lord brought this man into my life. Gratitude that I've been afforded such an incomprehensibly stunning romance. Gratitude for His perfect design, His deep love for me and for Andrew. Gratitude that suddenly I have so much perspective on the stupid little dealings in my life--all this stuff about renters and money and "oh, I'm such a hardass?" Who cares? I'm full of love and softness now. I've been reminded what matters. It's not about power and control and making sure that everybody does what I need them to do. If I may be pardoned a line that I never thought I would say outside of jest or quoting, love is all you need.
Thank you, God.