I need you so much closer

it's been a very long time since I've been this frustrated with my life. I'm not bored or confused or even complacent, I just hate it. I just want it to be different. I always say that but this time it's painful. I feel like I'm going to hyper-ventilate every time I see the same faces again, or hear the same sounds - the door slamming shut, the buzz of the door unlocking, the white noise from the tv that never gets turned off. I'm having a long, slow panic attack. I've never had comfort in consistency or commitment. I can't get away from the things I want to leave, and the only things I want are too far away. I'm so close to running away.

I went to Chicago on Tuesday for no good reason except just to be away from the everyday. A few hours in the car alone and a lot of hours with some favorite people was perfect and now it's everything I can do to stay here for more than 2 days in a row. Seeing the boys was a painful thing. The part at the beginning of that talk from Don Miller about having true community and it being painful to be separated from it is really true. There's so much that I don't share with them, but I didn't have to justify my words or thoughts or actions or feelings to them which made me accept them myself. It was one really long good conversation, 24 hours of that thing that happens after like 2 beers where you feel like you just get it, even if you really don't. At one point I was sitting in a crowded gay bar shouting above the trance music at the top of my lungs what I know about how God feels about sex, marriage, love, and why I care, and I was being heard in a way that could only happen in that context. That's what I want. I was screaming love louder than sin, even though my sin was so much louder, and it wasn't my love, and that's the gospel. And now I'm back to sitting silently in the dark every night in fear that we might actually communicate, and closing my door and hiding in my room to get away.

In the midst of all this frustration, I think God keeps giving me glimpses of accomplishment. Nothing significant, just visual pictures of things advancing. Helping out at the Broadway spot, painting my apartment, luke and i standing eye to eye, moving cars at the dealership, etc.

I love how he does that.