The Question You're Asking (a guest post for Guarded Hearts)

Today I'm guest posting over at Guarded Hearts, about a question we tend to ask ourselves when we wish that we were dating. Won't you join us? You can find the blog itself here and the post here. 


A little bit of what I wrote...


This was the first time I’d ever fallen close to love – and the question lingered on long after he had gone to college and I had continued at my school, and had crushes on other guys and hoped that they would ask me out. Why doesn’t he want to date me? I asked my friends at sleepovers. I asked my parents in car rides back from the mall drinking Coke from McDonald’s. I asked God sitting with my back against the soft wood of the pews at church. I would grip my hands tightly together and ask, God, tell me, what did I do wrong? Why am I not that person? Why does she have a boyfriend and I don’t? 

Six years later, I am still asking the question. It isn’t about that particular boy anymore. It was never about that particular boy, or any of the ones that have followed in the pattern of hope and uncertainty, awkwardly flirtatious conversations that always stay just this side of friendship, and hours of journaling about just why it is that they never seem to see in me what I see in them.


I have been on this quest to find the reason, the flaw, the thing about me that’s wrong, the big mistake. I tell myself that if only I knew why they didn’t choose me, I could change it. I ask because I have this desperate belief that some day one of them will have the answer, will tell me the secret to being single, the real reason that I haven’t been kissed in years and the real reason that eyes seem to skip over me.

I have guessed about a million reasons that boys don’t ask me out, or the reason they only see me as a friend when I hope for more. But none of those reasons, however much I speculate, however much I spin out stories about being unworthy or not beautiful enough or smart enough, however long I lie in bed leafing through He’s Just Not That Into You half-heartedly, are an answer. 


To keep reading, click on over here.


Love,

Hilary

Just ten minutes to say what I love

I have ten minutes, of this day that has been full of good things, to remind myself. To tell the story of what I love, to whisper it and shout it and sing it and write it here without second-guessing. (this is inspired by Lisa-Jo who's teaching us to spin five minutes of joy on Fridays - visit her at The Gypsy Mama).

Go.

I love the sound of music in the morning when my muscles stretch and yawn and I remember that the new day is beginning and no one knows what it might hold. I love the promise of a new dress hanging in my closet that fits like a glove and tells me in the deep corner of doubt that yes, I am becoming beautiful and yes, someday my eyes will catch up with the sun and the light and the truth and I'll see it for myself.

I love to write and slip these words into your day. I love to imagine who you are and where you read this, whether you drink dry cappuccino or you drink a glass of white wine or whether you scroll through with popsicle stained fingers from a wrestling match with a three year old. I love to imagine what your story is. Whether you are in the wild forest of first love or in the quiet night with fireflies twinkling wondering if God will ever tell you where He wants you to go to grad school, or in the stage where kids are growing like weeds and their shoes never fit them.


And let's tumble out the stories of what I'm learning to love: connecting social democracy and communism in post-WWII Europe, sorting out the difference between Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr as political thinkers and theologians, the joy of reading about Europe and the 1929 Concordat between Pope Pius XI and Mussolini. I'm deep in love with history.


I love poetry. I love how Edward Hirsch is the best birthday present. How Rainer and Pablo and Mary become names of hearts that echo my own and how their words promise me that the world will never not be miraculous. I love cupcakes on sunny days and dancing on the 18th century floorboards and singing like the world depended on it.

I love the line, your one wild and precious life.

I love to reach my hand over to touch someone's arm and say, "I'm here." I love to listen without looking at my phone. I love to hold your heart in my heart.

I have only one minute to say it, and it's this? That the world dips and soars in the blazing light of being made new again and there is no hurricane he can't mend and I have seen Him? And His voice is the only thing that comforts and quiets this turbulent heart?

And He is who He promised. And He is that good. And He is that faithful.

Love, always, from this learning heart,
Hilary

I become whole again (a five minute post)

It's Friday, dear friends, over at the Gypsy Mama, and Lisa-Jo creates space for us to let our words fly free and joyful. On Fridays, we write for just five minutes without editing, without second-guessing, and we let ourselves listen to the clacking of keyboards and the promise of something beautiful emerging.

Come join us, and let your words fly free, too?

This week the prompt is: whole.

I'm panting up the hill and my runner's high keeps my legs moving, propelling me forward. I feel my mind zigzag through this busy week, this week of standing at crossroads looking at the ones less taken and more often taken and wondering if there's ever going to be clarity for the broken halves of answers in my heart, answers for all these jagged questions that poke and prod my mind.

And as I reach the crest of the Hill I feel His spirit touch the windowpane of my heart and suddenly He's there, right there, and I'm telling him about all the things I've done this week, all the forgetting of joy and the complaining, the choosing to regret and second guess and doubt, and I'm whispering to the waving branches and the rabbit dashing into the field on my right that I forgot Him in the midst of all that broken self.

And I hold open my sweaty palms - white against the darkening sky, and I cast my eyes up in front of me where the sun is blazing its way down beneath the horizon and I feel it again, that movement, that wind in my heart that says, wait for me, Hilary and I am running home faster than I've ever run before because it's all new again, and He is here in this moment with the heavy weight of blessing and the waiting is a promise. And the waiting is a promise.

I round the corner and feel my muscles burn as rush into the house and I beam out a smile that comes from my toes upwards, because the broken selfish pieces of me I left with are miraculously made whole by His hand on my heart and His voice that holds me close as I run home.

Love,
Hilary