Somewhere between a flat tire and the end of the world

It's been one of those days. I can't remember how this ends, but I've been here before - where I keep slamming my head into the same wall, and wondering why I do that.

I wrote a long letter to an old friend today - that felt good, although I fear I dumped a little too much reality into it. Don Miller says there's always a secondary conversation happening when we communicate - stuff we don't verbalize, but that we say with our posture and hands, with our inflection, our eyes, our commas. It's the language of what's really going on - what our hearts are really saying, what we are to cautious to speak. I hate that, but I know it's true. And I don't think Jesus did that with his people. So why do we?

If I really said everything I was thinking, I'm pretty sure someone would regret it. I would wish I had kept something hidden - so there would be a piece of me to call my own. But I think love means going deeper than normal relations - digging at the heart of someone, proving to them that you value what they've been keeping locked up in their hearts. Showing them your heart, and hoping they'll trust you enough to open up as well. Tricky.

So why do we edit ourselves? I mean, at the risk of shocking ourselves, maybe we should try saying what we actually feel. I use that word intentionally - saying what we THINK could turn in to a big mess. But what we feel sometimes can be the compass to what's really happening. Not that our emotions aren't flawed - but we can certainly expect them to act as alarms to what we might need to address. There's a reason they're there, and we should pay attention.

All the people I love...and only about a third of them have ever heard me say that. Why is it so hard? I have expected truth out of them - why do I let myself off so easily? Maybe we're supposed to be scared of that - so that we'll have to risk something and die just a little whenever we extend ourselves to love someone else. Maybe that's how it's built. If we never feel that tug of torture when we say those words, we've never really experienced the whole thing. Love produces the courage to say it, the certainty that makes you go there even if...everything else.

Still.

I think it's the difference between a flat tire and the end of the world. We treat the flat tire like the horrible, debilitating interruption that costs us time and money on the day we especially don't need the interruption, throwing our hands up at the universe. But although in the context of daily life those reactions seem appropriate, they leave us with no response left to give the end of the world. I mean, if the end was today - this VERY day - how would we respond? Would we be sad we had spent all that emotional energy venting over our inconvenience, when we should have taken that same energy and said something so important that someone's life could depend on it? Like, "I love you." That could change your life. It HAS changed lives. It does so every day. But we'd rather go through our lives saving moments of frustration for our emotional rushes rather than conjuring them for more important things like recognizing the ones you couldn't live without. I do it too. I just wish I didn't.

I grew up a little uncomfortable about that L word. I heard it from my parents and siblings, but had a hard time using it on friends. And the only boyfriend I ever had didn't hear it from me. Stupid English - we only have one word to use to describe all this range of emotion, so we'd rather not use it than risk being misunderstood. But would being misunderstood be such a bad thing? So someone feels just a little more loved that day than you intended them to feel from you. So what?? Better to have said it, I think.

But then, I'm crazy. I mean, I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this stuff...I'm just venting my own frustration about how I do or do not filter myself around people. I'm considering how I relate well, and how I fail to relate all together. I just think we've been bred to be so cautious that we're losing half the experience of life that we were meant to know.

May the people I truly love never wonder how I feel.