At Bat

“Sometimes I wonder, where I’ve been, who I am, where I fit in…”

It seems as though life enjoys throwing curve balls. It is always the first pitch that makes you comfortable. Swing! Home run! The crowd cheers. You smile and before you know it, it’s your turn at bat again. Well, what do you know? Another hit, another run, another estatic crowd cheering wildly. Your confidence soars. Again and again this happens. Then, the curve ball. Swing, miss, shock spreads through the crowd. You muster up your confidence, a little fractured, but still intact, and you step up to the plate again. Another curve ball, swing, miss, silence from the crowd. Your confidence is broken now but you can still manage to hold it together with shaking hands. You step up the the plate once more, hands sweaty, brow furrowed, you just have to overcome these failures, you just have to make that home run one more time. There’s the pitch. It heads straight for you. You lick your lips and swing, only to see the ball dance away at the last minute. Another curve ball. You’re out. How can you be out? You are, though, and that turns your confidence to goo running through your fingers as the crowd that loved you moments before glares at you with condemnation and anger. It is all your fault, after all.

I feel as though I took a vacation from what I should have been doing and sat at the dock of the bay and drank cherry Dr. Pepper every day while musing over the uses and misuses of my talents. Then, I returned and felt the solid ground beneath my feet and I was ever so ready to tackle life again. Of course, things went wonderfully. And then the curve balls of life came my way.

Even if you value yourself greatly, see the worth within yourself clearly, it doesn’t help when someone leaves you. Especially without an explanation. I did this to my friends a few months back. Boy, did we all feel that! Now, sitting here beside Mary and wondering, simply wondering, if life is going to repeat the devastion it wrought over a year ago to our friendships, I feel at a loss of what to do. I want to call, but what if there’s an answer? What do I say? What if they respond with anger and irritation? What if they don’t answer? What if they don’t respond? They haven’t yet.

So, friends hiding away, curve ball number one.

Then, the coldness of people washed over my mom and I recently, mixed with the kindness of people, giving us the ability to survive the cold cruelty. But, why so cruel? Why so hard? I have reached a place of white-hot fury and have allowed God to remove it and keep me sane. But, one day, we won’t be there anymore. One day, we won’t allow you in anymore. Then, where would you be? So willing to forsake us for others, so willing to toss us aside…until tragedy hits you. Then you want us there. Until you have plans and need us to make the way for you to do what you want, then you want us there. I want us to be closer…but I will not pay the price you’re demanding. I will not watch her cry over your hateful ways. I will do all that I can to eliminate the pain that you cause.

So, hurtful, hateful people, curve ball number two.

I have likened falling in love with Jesus Christ to a person standing on a cliff. All they have to do is jump. The thrill of the fall, the cool spash of the refreshing waters below, all a packaged deal. But, if one does not jump, one never knows. I want to leap. However, I am, oddly, remaining on the cliff edge. This frustrates me. How could I want something so badly and fail to leap for it? It seems like so long ago that I was madly in love with Jesus Christ, to the point where life was wonderful simply because He was mine and I was His. How did I lose that? It was the compromises that set it all afire and sent it away. My desires is to know Him, to have Him know me, and to be completely consumed.

So, drifting away from my Beloved, curve ball number three.

These have all added up to me being out of the play right now. Though I am still seeking Him, though I am still believing in absent friends, though I am not being cruel in response to cruelty, I am sitting on the bench, waiting for my next turn at bat. And this time, no outs!

~ by mystdancer50 on May 8, 2009.