In Defense of the Spark

Picture it in your mind. Try to imagine just a bit of what ails me. Not pretty of course, not even rational to many I am sure. This really is not some new thing that has just now reached up and demanded my attention or even a long planned offensive that I am certain would offend my honor. No, the answer to why the following was put to print lies somewhere in the middle, such a gray area indeed. But how much of life lies in these very same areas is apparent more and more each day.

I guess it started that night when Brooke napped next to me on the couch as I studied. The thought hit me then, a washing over of emotion preceded the thought. I had indeed reached a place of deep remorse causing a powerful sense of creativity unhindered. With a pen clutched in my right hand and a pad of paper prepared I wrote a poem. A strange one really, that ended with an observation that the sadness was manifested angst that could only be filled with a wife. This was at the age of 22 I believe. I soon learned though that the answer to this did not lie in any woman I then knew but somewhere in a then hazy future. Was the tragedy that I was so shallow as to desire such a thing or the swift reaction I had soon afterwards and clung to ever more that these feelings are wrong and a sure weakness of heart. I cannot claim these long standing conclusions were my own entirely. What is a man but a shady sum of the culture that surrounds him and love and its trappings are surely part of the equation. Trapped I seemed to be, told that love was to be a thing of hubris and heart an object to be gallantly defended. Where then were the defenders of the offensive aspirant or the scarred heart? These were the heroes of none, the people we whispered about as an example to flee from. It is not that now I am seeking to emulate them in defiance of what I today consider a mistake on my part. Instead I am weighing both in hopes of finding a middle way devoid of shrouded gray and emotional whim. I was wrong to fear that poignant moment in Texas now so many years ago. For truly as I march this day I march with the same sense beating ever stronger. I folded on what I truly wanted in the face of a better way. And with each withering year I compensated with friendship and toil. Can it be wrong to desire this, for I often felt it was? Do not cheer for the reckless one they would say for they defy a God who asks us to wait and listen. Herein may then lie my struggle, that being that God has been asked to want us to wait and listen. A reverse of order that stems from a fear of an ever growing riddle of deep relationships. Not that our Lord would sanction a wanton headlong charge void of His counsel. Ah, but here again we are back where we started, lost in a terrible shade of gray. I am not ashamed to admit that I am reluctant, not bold enough to take a firm step, not jaded enough to find an unhindered answer, and not so far gone as to cherish a feeling deep inside that will find completion on a day not so unlike this in a place sanctioned from long before that only now seems a way better than the culture of trepidation that wrongly asks me to languish.