Bottom Line

Life is always weird.
Things happen and you're just like...what?
I am in a beautiful relationship with a passionate, funny and God-fearing man...I still cannot comprehend why he would love me as he does, appreciate me the way he does, know me the way he does. I am blessed and there is no way around it...it's just one of those things where I'm like...what?

A man told me on Wednesday that I am a "deep ocean, a HUGE ocean, and I'm thinking of the Pacific here because its the largest..." Have you ever...has someone ever talked to you and it felt like they were looking into your soul? I know that sounds corny but have you ever experienced it? Wednesday was the 3rd time that it has happened. It's when somone reads you, gets into your head and your heart and sees all those things you try to keep quiet...things you've never really voiced to anyone...and then, wham, someone knows and they are telling you what is your heart to your face! And your're like...what? Yeah...

1. My first experience was with Christo Stein from Holland...we were both on Teen Missions Int'l. Those luminous larg brown eyes of his, staring compassionately into mine, and speaking aloud what I KNEW had never been spoken of before...he saw me...saw through every freakin' facade I tried to show...left me trembling.

2. Chuck Williamson was my second "soul speaker." I thought that was an appropriate though semi-misleading term. We were in Mexico my rookie year...everyone was in bed besides Chuck and I stepped out of my tent to brush my teeth. He told me to have a seat...I did. And before I knew it he found me...he found Jamie...and I kept crying and he kept talking about...me...and everything he said I thought, everything he said I felt, was right...something I had thought I was hiding well...but there were other things...things that he wouldn't have known about...thoughts, feelings...and they were there...still are there in Mexico...and life went on as though nothing had happened...as though he didn't know my secrets...

3. The third experience was with a friend named Mike...I help out at his office...I don't know where it started, I don't know how it started...but he sees me as a beautifuly complex individual...someone he and his family care very deeply for. And before I knew what was going on, my eyes were teary and then I remembered the feeling of nakedness, vulnerability, fear, confusion...and I wanted to run and hide underneath a rock but just like before, my feet were firmly planted where they were and I could not move...I wanted to hear I was understood. I wanted to hear that I had been thought about and prayed about...I wanted to hear that someone SEES past all this crap.

"I have my writing," I tell him. "I have my journal...but it doesn't talk back."

Do you know how incredibly...I felt like such a whimp, like such a loser...

"It must be lonely sometimes..."

Yeah, I tell him. Sometimes.
Is it sad that I just want a friend? Someone to sleep over. Someone to drink coffee with. Someone to laugh with, be crazy with, be spontaneous with, be girly with...someone I can be totally honest with...all of my thoughts, no matter how sinful they may be...let me tell them to you so you can put me line! I want to know I'm safe. I just want to be real...regardless of how ugly or beautiful that may be. I don't have that. At least not here. And its hard...its so freaking hard...and if you come across this, whoever you are, say a prayer for me that I will be strengthened and that I won't give up...that I will truly love other people by allowing them to be real with me.

I don't want to live in shadows.
I don't want to be an afterthought.
I don't want to be a left-over.

I just want a friend.
I want to be a friend...in every sense of the word...

the end.