Waiting

I’m a fortunate man.

My life is filled with blessings, goodness.

There’s been a shift in the way Brenda and I interact. If she comes over or calls for the boys, I might or might not talk to her.

To her credit I see she is doing more with the boys than I would have guessed. I thought that as we settled into our new lives, she would withdraw more from them, but she is making an effort.

Saturdays she takes Jeremiah to Special Olympics. She missed the first practice of the season, so I took him and figured it would fall to me.

I was wrong.

She has taken him to his practices, and though she could take him right back to the group home when he finished, instead she does extra things. Last Saturday he wanted Chinese food. They had lunch, just the two of them. He wanted to go look in a thrift store. They went (he got a wallet). He needed a bike helmet, so they went to a sporting goods store and she bought him a very nice one.

She is doing more than I thought for him. Not to impress me, or to keep her word, but she truly seems to be motivated. I think she will keep a close eye on Isaac while I am in Thailand and he will be fine.

I think one of the things difficult about this divorce, at least for me, is simply my own world view. Moving from a paradigm which centered on being married... getting the kids raised, looking forward to a time when she and I would begun a new chapter in our lives, it was as real as a future can be.

Looking back I see so many things that reflected the truth of her affair. She took to sleeping on the couch often. Sometimes she said it was because I snored, which was difficult to believe since I can be a light sleeper and I had no sense of snoring (and sometimes I can sense things occurring in the real world from within my sleep). I didn’t understand her anger when I got those anti-snore strips so she wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch. She kept telling me it wasn’t necessary, and when pressed, said I really wasn’t snoring, perhaps a little deeper, heavier breathing.

She said she felt too warm and needed the cooler air of the living room.

She had complained about our sex life. So I began, three years ago, injections which would have helped, had her anger not gotten in the way again. None of that anger was really directed at me. It was guilt and the towering anger that grew from guilt.

She started getting serious about losing weight, getting firm, using face creams to ward off wrinkles, wearing clothing more typical of a younger woman. I sensed it was not about or for me.

Now I am getting used to a quieter household, just Isaac and I.

We’ve been listening to music together in the evening while he plays on the computer and I read or write. Quite the range too. Last night we started with Bob Marley, then to Ben Harper, then Mendelsohn, The Cranberries, Fats Waller, The Decemberists.

There is a part of me still angry. A part of me resents her new happiness. A part worries about her feelings few years down the road when she may have regrets. I don’t like feeling angry.

Meanwhile... back at The Green Leaf Ranch, things have settled quite a bit and I have found myself enjoying life. I'm smiling more. My teaching has improved. I am on my game.

Perhaps it’s because it is Spring. The grass has the green that only happens in early Spring, while it grows so fast a weekly mowing is hardly enough. Little primary leaves are sprouting throughout my garden, vanguards for the legions that follow. Spring in Oregon is glorious.

But to be honest (and I try to be), I think I’m feeling good because I am shaking off the dust of my divorce, washing my face with Spring water, and beginning, just a little, to relax.

I’ve written before about my suspicion that time is two dimensional. The more I think about that the truer it seems. There may be a temporal direction perpendicular to the linear one our bodies function within.

I suspect that the experiences of today have always been. That time doesn’t really move at all. The sense of passing time is a construct of our minds, a part of having a mortal experience within an immortal life.

There are events of my life which not only seem to continue in some sense, but upon reflection, I think I felt them long before they happened. I think there were moments in my life when I sensed a connection to other times of my life. 1961 is connected to 1976 and 1982 and 2008.

There were moments, times, in those years which seem to somehow overlap each other. I suspect that the notion that they are separate is just a construct. I suspect that who and what I really am exists beside the timeline we know as life.

I know this sounds strange, and it is difficult for me to find the words to express what I am thinking.

There will be griefs in my future, just as there have been in my past. There are joys there as well. I can feel them, existing in a now that stretches beond the borders of what we usually consider as “now”.

Much of the frustration people have about, with, or for God stems from troubled times when He seems distant.

I feel He is always there, always here. The limits of a single dimension of time don’t apply. He holds the universe like I might hold my hat. It is a thing... a construct of space-time that resides in a larger truth.

I am much more patient with children now than when I was young. Moving down the path of time I have grown tolerant of the antics of my middle school charges. There is a feeling that this place of tolerance comes from outside, not just from experience and aging.

I think this growing feeling of patience and affection and tolerance echoes the deeper reality of His character, His personality, His creativity.

The impatience and frustration of the past year or two or three comes from not being able to feel the larger part of who I am.

Interesting that as I get older, as my mortal life has less time to work with, I grow more patient and willing to wait... It feels less like sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for my turn than it does simply waiting for... waiting for me to learn... waiting on...

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary

You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

If this made any sense to you... drop me a note... These symbols of ideas, words, are inadequate to express what I am feeling.