28 Years.

Since I have been at work today, I have successfully purchased a new down vest in Kelly green online, read the news, and stared out the window. Of more emotional significance I just had a ten minute conversation with one of my favorite Fairfield clients about his ex wife, whom he was married to for 28 years. I asked how many of those years were good ones, he said 18. I followed up by asking "were the good ones in the beginning or the end?", fully anticipating that the first 18 were the good ones. Instead, he replied, "the last 18 were the best".

I sat perplexed listening to him talk about how they all weren't the best they could have been, but that the relationship had matured into something he felt more comfortable with. He said he was surprised when she left him, and that for a long while he would have done anything to have her back. He has since moved on, and has been in a different relationship for eleven months. The ex wife? Regrets her choice, and is waiting... waiting for him to realize that their 28 years was more then he could create with someone new.

I like this client. He always makes me laugh, he is a seemingly hard working man, didn't want to give up, and believes in the choices that we make that summon us to be better people despite the ways in which we may hurt because of them.

I am in a sea of choices. I am in a place full of every possibility that is open, and I am trying to protect myself from being hurt by making the wrong one for the wrong reason. I wonder more, if I could forgive myself for pursuing a dream that took me down the wrong path, or if it really doesn't matter which way I go.

We can justify to ourselves a thousand times why we are waiting for someone or something to change. When we have passed what is practical waiting, and into the interminable time of impatience we can argue forwards and backwards why we are doing what we are doing. When dealing with a friendship in peril, we don't call them because we are waiting for them to call and reach out to us. When our family is being difficult, we wait for the dynamic to pass over before tackling it and resolving it. When we love someone that continually hurts us, we wait for them to change. And the all too familiar classic example: when we want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with us, we wait for them to realize what we think we know with certainty.

An area I struggle with is waiting... waiting for Me. I don't want to wait for the future and I don't want to wait for what is coming. For some reason I think knowing what is going to happen will ease this insatiable desire to wait, but I know that instead I will be an accelerator of emotion and control. I wait for the calling to be louder and more concise. I wait for love. I sometimes feel like the things that I seek are waiting on me to change. I sometimes talk myself in circles about what those things or people could be.

The man I spoke with today was married to his wife longer then I have been alive. Their promise of forever is broken, and who they became because of the time they spent together, and now since their relationships demise is continuing to be molded by the choices they made together... she is waiting on him, he is not waiting for her. In my 27 years I wonder how many times I ran so hard away from what was just supposed to be a time of prescense and stillness.

How do you know if you are supposed to be one place or another? How do you really know? Do you just jump and make choices when you are flying in the air, hoping you land on your two feet? In the past I've had clear direction, and Christ like assertion... and then there are other times when I felt more blind and scared. I have survived both situations. I sense the Saviors touch, and wisdom through friends that I have been open with about the struggle. I know that His purpose is real. I am thankful that I can see it and feel it in moments my eyes are wide open, and my heart is vulnerable.

While in this place, and in my life, I seek for a hand to be found in mine, and a voice that says, "Kari, I will wait with you. I will help you, wait for you. It will be worth it."