Night Shift provides a lot of time alone with your thoughts. While the rest of the world sleeps you find yourself awake and searching for something, anything to fill the loneliness or the boredom. I have not been adjusting well, which has probably been obvious. I don't know if it's the feeling of laziness or the lack of productivity or just being female but I had a bit of meltdown tonight with my best friend. As usual I more than likely over exaggerated, in my head, the gravity of what I was feeling, but nonetheless I felt overcome. It wasn't really anything specific but more general in nature. I have started to date again and I feel it is opening up things in my heart that I thought I had dealt with or closed, but those sneaky little wounds seem to reopen without much warning. Let me just start off by saying, I am horrible at dating. I don't do well with knowing the appropriate boundaries in newly developing relationship, because my entire personality is about all or nothing. I don't downshift very well or even shift at all. Even after years of counseling I find myself struggling with wether or not I even feel it's necessary to be different then who I am by default. It feels more like a game, and I am no good at that game. I want what's easy, and if it is easy I want it all the time. I'm simple in that regard. I can almost hear my friends chuckling to themselves as they read this, knowing exactly what I mean. So, how is dating going? It's depressing. I'm not really sure what "chemistry" is based upon but I know immediately if I feel it and if I don't I can't ever create it. I know there a lot of girls in my boots. We don't want to be alone, we want a family, but we also can't settle. I left a date the other night and I just began to sob in my car. All at once it hit me that this might just not happen for me again. I had a husband. I experienced the love that takes work and the reality of how difficult "unconditional" really is. That might have been my go around and the Lord quite possibly may have a completely different season in store. I think I have been trying to create it on my own because I thought I had it and it was amazing, and then it wasn't. I wanted that back. I wanted him back, and he wanted someone else. These wounds run deep. Probably all the way back to the garden. I'm not enough, I fail, I disappoint and I fall short regularly. What we are all searching for is for someone to say, even still, you are worth it and I will love you. I have that in the Lord. I want it in a man, I wanted it in this particular man, but that's not my story. I have different story. My tantrum tonight was about wanting a piece of the "joy" pie, and feeling shafted by God. I then started thinking about all my friends and their situations and I started feeling like all christians were getting shafted. I meditated on all those suffering with chronic illness, poverty, tragedy and relational devastation and my heart began to ache.  Oh satan, so sly in his dealings with us. I called my friend and I asked her to pray for me and I am just so thankful to have friends like her. She reminded me of this life being but a vapor, and to stay heavenly minded, she also talked about the grace and the mercy God has allotted us to endure. It's amazing how the truth does set you free. You can be drowning in your woes and then your heart gains perspective, you gain Christ and you are renewed. I don't know how those without Him as their hope survive. As we continued talking we started imagining a different story a bigger story. Maybe I will be in a orphanage and I can love without reserve without hesitation. All rules of engagement are cast away and I can give and that in of itself with give back. I got excited. I forgot about him not choosing me, and realized I am chosen and I can show others they are too. Thank you Lord for the fellowship of the body and friends that protect us from ourselves.