Being single stinks.

I know some people who think we have it so easy without a husband, “you must have so much time”. Without kids, “that’s why you still look so young for your age” people say.

They are just pushing the knife deeper in to my wound.

While those things hurt, I think the hardest one for me is having no one else I can depend on. I learned a long time ago that I had no choice but to depend on myself. So I change my own tires, I hang my own pictures, I put together my own furniture, I pug in my own heavy packages, I take out my own trash. I have to do it all by myself.

I don’t consider myself a particularly lonely person. I’m introverted, so I don’t need people around all that much. Every once and a while, though, I come home after a rough day and really wish I had someone to be with. Someone who would try to fix my problems. Someone to complain to. Someone who would fail to see my expectations, some who would hurt me, someone to be a witness for my life. Someone to depend on.

But I don’t. I depend on myself to get things done. To pay the bills. To do the hard stuff.

I just don’t buy the stuff that’s too heavy to lift.

I really don’t like this word. Noting specifically came to mind about it when I first learned of the prompt. 

Well…

except that I thought “I really don’t like this word.”

I’m not good at accepting what life brings me as enough. I always think, know, believe, wish for more. As if iIwere entitled to more than what I’d been given.

This gets messy, you see, because I don’t believe in accepting the status quo. “No acquiescing!” I cry in my heart. We are called to be more! We must push forward.

That also can make me terribly ungrateful for what I’ve been given.

There is such a tension in this. The already and the not yet. We are called to more – it’s part of the molding and shaping into the image of Christ. Yet we aren’t there yet and that leaves us discontent. Unsettled. We aren’t accepting. Should we?

What are we called to accept? What are we called to love as it is? And what are we called to be unsettled with, to push past? I’m thinking there really isn’t a list… as long as the accepting doesn’t turn to complacency and the pushing doesn’t turn to legalism.

What a tension we are constantly living in. Called to be grateful – simply another form of accepting – yet called to be more. The older I get, the more I see these tensions. The more I am willing to sit in the grey areas of life and just listen. To what I should accept.

I’m much more comfortable moving…  on what I don’t.

I am linking up for Five Minute Friday. The FMF is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Today’s prompt is “Accept.” http://fiveminutefriday.com. 

I feel my heart bursting out of my chest and suddenly I cannot stop myself. The words pour out of me,racing from my brain to my heart to the fingers and onto my computer and

It’s like I just threw up.

I long for those burstings. Those moments I just cannot contains and words are so important, feelings too explosive, and meaning too valuable to stay inside me. To be inspired is far too often a rare thing for me, to be inspiring is what I long for all day long.

For inspiration to hit… for it to fall through me like a rock falling off a 20 story building… it can be unstoppable.

Which also means it can hurt.

I’ve had moments where my words are pain to others. Nights where my heart has rushed out onto my computer screen and the next thing I know, I’ve undone a friendship.

Where is the line between letting my words speak the truth and keeping those words contained? Where is that place where I can be certain that this inspiration is something that must come out… but won’t offend?

Does such a place of inspiring exist?

This post is part of Five Minute Friday, a link up of posts doing a five minute fee write on a prompt word. This week’s word is “inspire”.