Blur

It is nice having a place where it’s okay to ramble again without guilt or pressure. I fully intend to leave this space quiet some days. It’s a free spot. A place where I can pretty much do what I want to do, say what I want to say. I’m not trying to garner readers here, not attempting to build a business or hold any brand up. It is funny to me how having one place free makes me feel free in every other place too.

I get to post any photo I want, even the blurry art or my Polaroid playtimes. I guess I’m still learning my voice at my new blog. I’m still not quite sure what sound Kelly Sauer Photography has when she speaks. I think she ought to sound a little like she knows what she’s talking about, but tonight, she really only wants to remark candidly that while zoom lenses may not be for everyone, they are invaluable to someone like her, because her body doesn’t move as efficiently as the fully-healthy, gym-working-out, greater photographers out there. They may be a crutch, but hey, she’s used one before. Heck. She’s been wheelchair-bound.

I think there are a lot of things I want in life that I don’t want enough to ask for them. Or perhaps I’m too scared to want them or to ask for them, because asking always leaves room for the giver to say no. If I don’t want, I won’t be disappointed, right? I used to live by the mantra, “It never hurts to ask.” And that is true. But the not-receiving what I ask? That hurts. And then I just feel stupid for asking in the first place.

I told someone yesterday (the first outside person I’ve ever said this to) that I’ve never once asked God to heal me.

I am half-embarrassed to admit that, but only half. Everybody else was praying for it. It was the predictable thing. I had to be perfect or better or functional so they didn’t have to worry about me, didn’t have to notice me, so I wouldn’t inconvenience anyone. I figured God would rather listen to their prayers than to mine, especially after the thing He told me to pray didn’t happen.

I’ve figured a lot of things. There’s a cynical cost-benefit breakdown I make before I ask Him for anything, and it usually ends up with me getting distracted and not asking much at all. I find myself looking up at Him and screwing my face up because I just don’t get Him or me or most of life.

There is a queer in-between that happens between full blur and focus in my lens, when I see the impression of a thing, but just can’t see the thing itself, and I’m left wondering what in blazes I’m looking at, but it sure is pretty. That same in-between occurs when high-pressure systems meet low-pressure systems, and the sky turns weird yellow, not sunny, not gray, just sultry and indecisive. The one is beautiful, the other feels a bit dangerous, as if I should take cover, but maybe not?

I feel as if I’m in both places with God at the moment, blurry beauty coming into focus without the surety that I am safe to stand out in the day without something happening. He doesn’t really want me to do anything about it right now. Just wait. I think He’s building desire in me. I think He’s sorting me, sifting, humbling.

Asking for healing, it’s a risk.

If it comes, I won’t have convenient excuses to keep me from taking too much responsibility for my own failure. I’d have no reasonable choice but to live and pursue life if I can no longer claim the weakness that has acted as something of a safety net all of these years. Or if it doesn’t come, I feel as though I’d get another well-deserved lesson in how God doesn’t betray people, and His grace is sufficient for me.

But glorying in my weakness isn’t exactly… There’s a difference, you know, between saying, “Oh God is glorified in my weakness, praise Him!” and saying “Thank You, God, for the thorn.” The one is said standing in triumph, hands and eyes raised skyward; the other whispered with head bowed and knee bent.

It’s the difference between spirituality and humility, I’m guessing. And I’ve been too proud to bother with the spirituality for a few years now, but too proud – and too afraid – to dare the humility.

I’ve a feeling it’s going to come quiet. I may not even get words for it.

I guess sometimes the waiting is a bit blurrier than I’d like it to be, especially when I don’t know what I’m waiting for.