One Day My Prince Will Come

"And if I weep, 

let it be as a man 

who is longing for his home."

-Rich Mullins

"Does it make me suicidal if I sometimes think, 'Really, 70 more years of this?'"

I was sitting in one of my favorite restaurants in Austin a week ago, across the booth from both of my parents, and throwing that question out like it was nothing.  

But, in reality, they had my full attention.

I'm gradually losing my taste for what this world has to offer.  I've been feeling kind of down lately, a bit depressed.  No, disillusioned.  I've been on sort of a detox from a lot of the movies I usually watch--I'm trying to be really choosy about what I put in my head and heart right now--and things are feeling drier.

And as my head and heart are getting cleaned out, I'm also trying to lose weight to get down to my ideal BMI (body mass index).  This means that I've been choosing to say no to a lot of foods that I would like to just indulge in.  I'm trying to find balance in this process so that this isn't just a short-term, unsustainable, diet, but so that I can set a new pattern for how I eat and think about eating in the long term.  And, honestly, life feels less exciting when I don't get to eat everything I want to eat.

When I was younger, I bought into a lot of what the world sells.  As an example, in high school, I remember seeing a picture in a girls' magazine where a few models were posing as if they were friends.  They were physically gorgeous and had perfect smiles and seemed to glow, as if everything in their world was right because they had each other.  As if, because they were friends, they completed each other.  

So I went out and tried to create friendships like that, but found that not only can my friends not complete me, but try as I may, I do not have the power to complete my friends, either.  And the closer you get in a friendship, the more you see the brokenness of each other.  So I felt a bit cheated by the picture in that magazine, as if it had promised something on which it couldn't deliver.  

The world does this a lot--makes promises on which it can't deliver. 

A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to watch a movie to relax, and I was going through my movie collection, saying no to most of those colorful discs because of my detox plan, and I ended up re-watching The Lake House.  The movie stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and normally puts me in a pensively good mood, sort of sublime.

(Side note: what does the word "sublime" actually mean?  It's a good word, but I'm going to have to look it up.  For the purpose of the last paragraph, think of my meaning like this: The Lake House normally puts me in a mood that is both deep [sub] and sweetly zesty [lime].)

This time, as I watched, my heart experienced something much more infinite.

The movie is all about true love that has to wait.  And it was agonizing to my heart.  As the credits rolled, I knelt down on the rug in our living room and wept.  I was praying, painfully and from deep in my gut, "Oh, Lord, I miss you.  I feel like I've just realized who my true love is and now I may have to wait decades to be with you."

Paul said it this way: 

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

-Philippians 1:21, The Bible

But, oh, my lover, it is so hard to wait for you sometimes.  And this longing is with me, this pulling need to run into the arms of the Only One Who Can Satisfy and finally be at rest, finally be with you, finally be separated no more.  

It is hard to be here sometimes.  

So, a week ago, I am sitting across the booth from my parents at Magnolia Cafe in Austin.  We are there because it's my Dad's 60th birthday, and I am thinking I could use some wisdom from the vantage points of my 59-year-old mother and newly-60-year-old father.    

Pretending to be casually confident, I ask, "Does it make me suicidal if I sometimes think, 'Really, 70 more years of this?'"

I can't even look at them at first because the question is so important to me.  

"No," they answer. 

And I know I am not alone in my loneliness.