Soul Hole

"Cause I am just a beggar here at your door
I am just a shipwreck here on your shore
I come empty handed ready to see
Your life in me changing who I've been to who I need to be
Who I need to be"

-Starfield, "Shipwreck"



I am sad, and I can't explain it. Do you ever feel like that? Like there is not one specific point in your day or your life that you can point to, but there it is still, this persistently whining part of your chest that keeps reminding you that you are not whole?

Even with my closest friends, I feel the ache. Nothing seems to fill it, and it remains there, this open hole, wind blowing through it, whistling a sad tune.

Is this what Romans 8:22-24 is pointing to? Am I describing that "inward groan"?

I used to think that if I was a good Christian, the groan would go away. There seemed to be some kind of attainable satisfaction that I was missing and that maybe others had. Sometimes I look at my facebook page and think, "Man, that girl really looks like she has it all together," and I see how little the outside reveals the inside of a person.

I was walking across campus with a friend yesterday, and told her in a moment of even more honesty than usual, "I feel so insecure when I'm with you."

"Really?" she replied, and I said, "Yeah, but really with all my friends." I was talking about that hole. I've been watching myself, and lately, I've seen myself go into so many conversations with people, looking to complete a connection that will finally tie off the loose end in my heart. But the conversation ends, and I am still longing for satisfaction.

I am sad.

And yet, I am not without hope. Those verses I mentioned above, Romans 8:22-24, talk about how "hope that is seen is no hope at all". And I need to remember that facing reality includes facing the reality of hope, hope found only in Jesus. Hope found in admitting that I have no power beyond the power to hold the loose end of my frayed rope in my outstretched arm, and wait for God to do something about it, to complete the connection.

We did an exercise in acting class this week, a very simple and also very important exercise. Part of it involved standing in front of someone else in the class, stretching our arms out at our sides and then saying to that person, "I want." In our mind, we were supposed to think up something that we specifically needed from our partner, but reflecting on that exercise today in the car, I realized that you can really stop right there, with the first two words, and learn so much about our human existence.

I want.

When I type the word "want" into Google, I get two definitions for the verb form.

"1. have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for."

I want to live in London. I want to be a working actor. I want to stay in love with my husband for the rest of our lives, growing a thicker, saltier, more substantial relationship every day. But there's more than that, and this second definition of the word "want" gets into what I am talking about in this post:

"2. lack or be short of something desirable or essential."

I want: I walk lame. I speak with a fraction of who I am. I confuse up for down. I try to love you, but often worry about whether you love me or can speak the words that will justify my existence. I forget the cross and don't really comprehend what it accomplished. I feel the hole, down there in the torso area of my soul, looking out of the prison of my rib cage, waiting to be freed from its confined existence.

I need completion. I want.

And this makes me vulnerable. And it feels like fall, the dying season, tinged with beauty, longing for life beyond the winter that will inevitably come.

And it feels like the fall, that tragedy of our race, that decision to taste and see if what God said was not good might really be good instead. And then, death. Banishment. Murder, brother killing brother. And always, that remembrance of where we started, dependent but complete. Made of dust, but breathed into by the divine himself.

I want and I wait. And it hurts, but this is not the end of the story. But I need a reminder.


Come, Lord. Sing to me in the dark caverns of my soul, make music out of moans. I stand waiting, and all I can do is keep my arms outstretched at my sides, a most vulnerable position. I look you in the eyes, and tell you, beg you, as I say,


"I want."