You should really go do something other than read this post. Seriously.

As I finally begin writing this post, a joke keeps coming to mind. One which is best rendered in person, but must be told here nonetheless.

A rather large grizzly bear walks into the bar. He sits on a stool and rests his arms on the old wood. He looks at the bartender.

"I'd like a . . . . . . . . .cold drink."

"Sure," the bartender replies, "but why the big pause?"

I'm sitting here wondering if I could really feel less like writing this post. And I'm fairly certain the answer is no. Which seems to be a common theme with posts that come after long breaks, this one coming after 8 days. Speaking of which, I'd like to see a long pause in my writing here that wasn't caused or connected to . . . ickyness.

I suppose I should go ahead and warn that this post will be far from coherent, which might be why it is generally framed with more formal and structured writing than I typically try to use. I'm hoping that ties it together. On the upside I believe this will be a short post, so that's a plus.

Skipping over the typically cursory examination of why I'm writing again (because I've said it all before) I'm tempted to move on to why I skipped even though . . . well . . . I've said it all before. Which, interestingly enough, is the reason I took the break. I suppose it started with something else. Something more mundane, or more interesting depending on how you look at it. But really that's why nothing happened. There was nothing to write.

Things happened, of course. Feelings shifted. Revelations were had. Possible signs were experienced. Frustrations occurred. But in the end, none of it produced anything new. Nothing was worth writing. Worth asking people to read.

Nowhere is this more evident, more upsetting, and less productive the with the issue of Heather. I could here voice my dissatisfaction about how after nearly 6 months, its still something which bears such relevance as to appear in every post. I'm still praying with disconcerting regularity for such feelings and memories to abate, still with no reprieve. At times I've actually been moved or just desperate enough to pray in the opposite direction, a fact reflected in my prayer journal perhaps a half dozen times. The first time I did it I chastised myself rather strongly. I was even left wondering why I'd reacted so strongly, and why I continued to push in such a direction. And I think it comes down to moving on. Just squaring myself with that reality and sticking with it no matter what. I believe it has to come, surely as my next breath of air, and seemingly with the same circumstances of relief from the need.

So we'll skip over the one decent quiet time I actually had in the last 8 days and its concomitant passages, mostly doing so because I don't trust anything anymore. So then today I was thinking about healing and moving on and all that crap. And I got a hopeful spark of something. Perhaps all these feelings are just because they were never properly dealt with. Maybe I stowed them to quickly, didn't let them . . . . Predictably, I committed myself to just feeling the feelings and doing nothing about them. More predictably, that doesn't really work either.

I read this devotional tonight, about living in the now and the storm and God standing there to rescue and all that crap. And regrettably, it did nothing to make me feel better. Quite the opposite. This just isn't right. Not that it matters. Not that anything is going to change.

All of this is really just evidence of two things. The first, and perhaps ultimately most important, is that when everything is possible, nothing is real. So there are all these feelings, all these routes, all these potential signs. And because they are all there simultaneously, the end up meaning nothing. Nothing is real and nothing can be acted on, because nothing can be discerned. Which is most troubling since that's typically a spiritual gift of mine.

The other is something I'd like to write more on, but in its shortest, is duplicity, which is of course directly related to the first. I cannot surmount the constant wavering of thought lines. Determination not to date, followed by overwhelming desire to do so, followed by panic stricken reluctence to follow up, followed by lightly bitter complaining over the lack of suitable possibilities, followed by the return to desire . . . well lets just stop there.

Indeed, I wish I could put all such discussion behind me. How much I'd like to not talk about Heather, or dating, or more accurately the associated nothingness. And there I go repeating myself.

As a minor upside I do have something else to talk about.

I'm not close with God right now. In terms of discipline I'm still keeping things going, mostly. Its just . . . there's no intimacy. Its like He's at arms length. Really it feels like that's where everything is. It feels like having turned my heart off. Like nothing connects. Which brings us back to duplicity (i.e. realize have to go through the pain to get over her, vs. the shutting it out because I want her and further shutting it out because I don't want to want her because I want to get over her. Are we confused yet? I thought I said this was unrelated).

But back to feeling like God's not close and discipline. Still been praying, reading the Bible, reading/doing devotionals. All of it feeling empty and devoid. Seemingly pointless. Realistically leading nowhere, because there is no direction, and no . . . comfort, provision? I don't know. So this past week for three nights in a row I felt restless, two of them after rather fun filled and late outings. The last two nights of the stretch I had nearly identical dreams. I realized the significance when I woke up in the middle of the night after the second one.

In both dreams I found myself in a setting that I cannot recall, but was surely similar enough to be the same in the dreams. Due to circumstances I understood at the time, for some reason there was turmoil. I was placed in a situation both times where I had to fight. But instead of being confident, I was terrified. I knew I couldn't win the altercations, and worse, I didn't. So each time after quite a long set of circumstances, I escaped outside. In both dreams I turned my head to see a woman. Somewhat young, with a face I couldn't see, but her hair was short and dark. The first night she was a lone and the second night she carried a baby. Both dreams ended with a car trying to run me over.

Holy crap this post is depressing. And its redundant, both in subjects and specific content. I'm ready for all this to be by the wayside. I want to start a recurring post series called "lessons from:". Of course I still haven't written any of my other academic dream children. And they just keep stacking up.