Thee In-Between:

I find myself living in the in-between, standing in a doorway of sorts, not in or out but somewhere…in between. Identity is a precarious thing. A relationship with self is often, just as complicated as or even more so than all my other relationships. It ebbs and it flows, and sometimes it just exists – in between the two.

Part of the reason I find myself squinting in this season of twilight is because of my own choices. I’ve become somewhat unengaged and therefore un-engaging in recent months. Pre-motherhood has brought out a side of me that is very person and tremendously private. I have no energy or desire to put myself out there, to invite human drama into my life. Relationships seen too complicated to navigate suddenly.

Another aspect of this identity dilemma is fairly obvious. I don’t pray often. Mostly, I don’t pray because my prayers are very singular focused. There is one thing I have been begging for in, I believe, alignment with God’s will and yet it remains unanswered. I try to trust but after months and months of seeking in silence, the silence has numbed me. I go through the motions but there is no heart behind the petition, no true communion.

Also, I work in a church. It’s hard not to become jaded and unwilling to engage God as He is, not who others model or say He is. I’ve had moments of outrage and moments of tender compassion over these past few years of working in a church but lately, mostly, I just feel…nothing. The grace is gone. The passion has left. I do my work well out of obligation, nothing more and nothing less.

Lastly, I recently lost my best friend of eight years. We had a falling out and the relationship is severed, irrevocably broken. And I am sad.

The culmination of pregnancy, spiritual blockades and grief has left me…waning. Not in who I believe God is but in who I know myself to be, which has a way of changing all my relationships, even with my own self. I used to know who I was and if I forgot or got lost along the way my best friend would remind me or my church would dictate to me or my lifestyle would determine on my behalf but now, silence. It’s unwritten, neither hot nor cold, light or dark. Not in or out but somewhere…in between.

So I stand, unsure of going forward and having come too far to go back. I’m not frozen, just decidedly dormant.

As a typically impetuous person who usually does not spend a great deal of time thinking through decisions before I make them, I have to say, this doorway of dormancy is quite possibly a first for me. Since I am so rarely in between, I have to admit, I am quite literally blindsided by the force of…standing still.

And I don’t know where to go from here. So I wait. And I hope that, maybe, my life will be redefined by motherhood and that somewhere in all of this, there will be new beginnings.