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I was right...
It was impossible. So we're going out 
It's impossible
To be 'just friends' with someone you get on with better than anyone else, and whom you find devastatingly attractive.
I have tried and failed.
When you know the ending
Occasionally I re-read books. Not every book works with re-reading, but some do. At the moment I am re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I've reached a dark bit, but because I know the ending, even though I feel for the characters, I am not sad really. If I could speak to them, I would say "press on, little ones, it will be good!". However at these same passages on my first reading I myself was filled with doubt and fear as to whether it would all be good. It must be a bit like that for God watching us. The hardest chapters of our lives are given extra significance for him - he knows the strength of character to be forged from this battle, the outcome to be won from that, and he knows when our struggle against a particular thing is 5 minutes from breakthrough. I wonder how many times he has longed to say to me, in the midst of fear and pain, "press on, little one, it will be good"...
Sometimes when you talk to a friend you know the ending. You know that God will rescue them, that he will bring unimaginable joy out of their deepest pain. It doesn't mean that you don't feel their sadness, and that you aren't saddened by it, but it does give you a different perspective. I think this is why Jesus wept at Bethany.
Tick
I suffer from fear of failure. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Well it's bad. I get palpitations at the thought of less than 110%. I imagine a future in which no-one loves me, and in which the world falls apart because of some mistake I make. For me, abject failure consists in making a mistake, any mistake! So this week I had a bit of a chat about this with my boss, as it's crippling me somewhat. Every week I face a potential workload that is simply too much for one, or even six, people to achieve and my attitude to it up til now has been an unsustainable one - namely I have been borrowing energy and health from future-Bex. The issue, and possibly my savng grace, is that the job is never going to diminish, because there are always more and more opportunities to do good things. This means that I am being forced to confront my fear of failure.
One reason I fear failure so much is that I find it easy to forget success. We all know that one negative comment can prey on the mind longer than 10 encouragements. I think this is even more true for the judgements we make on ourselves. So I have resolved to occasionally take stock of what I have achieved, both in work and outside. I'm a little scared that this will make me proud and boastful but I think that actually it will help me to see how much God, and other people, play a part in it all.
Next week I'm going to be in Ireland with a good friend for a few days. Time enough while flying across the Irish Sea to note down what I have achieved these past 6 months. Perhaps I'll use the return journey to set some goals for the 6 months ahead.
This may all sound like lovely, whimsical navel-gazing but it's actually critical. If I can't change in this way I'm not going to be able to continue being in Senior Management roles because I will have a breakdown. My friends and family have been amazingly accommodating of the fact that I put work before them all the time, but no-one is infinitely patient. Sailing above the clouds and counting my boxes ticked will make me feel better, and probably encourage me, but I need God to deal with the deeper fears at the root of it. When I was five I lied to my parents and told them I'd won a stupid Easter Bonnet competition at school. Not because they cared remotely whether I won, but because I needed them to believe I was the best... at five! So unnecessary - my dad thinks I'm the crown of creation just because I was born! Some of the need to win might be inbuilt type-A programming, and might be with me til I die but I refure to believe that God programmes fear into any of us, so I'm going to pursue his perfect love that drives out all fear...
Wish me luck!
Setting culture
Sometimes we suffer from being part of a bad culture, and then we wake up to realise that we helped build it and we feel bad - very bad. This isn't a new thing, I shouldn't be surprised. Every time I have worn clothes deliberately aimed at making myself look thinner I have contributed to our stupid cult of women-bones. I have to be careful, because a blog is a public sphere, but to put things simply, I have contributed to some of the worst aspects of the place in which I work, and I have to see what I can do to change it.
I'm tired in a long-term kind of way - the tiredness of months. I haven't been on holiday for a couple of years. But these things are both my responsibility - no-one else's. The lack of someone to blame makes the tiredness more profound. I feel like my mind is dull, my edge is gone.
And underneath it all is a current of deep excitement. Here I am, once again, with nothing. I've reachd the limit of my own strength. My creativity has run out, and I am left a tired, stressed shell. I can't write lyrically any more because I am dry. Being in this place is freedom, because anything can happen. I could wake up tomorrow with purpose instead of mere drive.
I need my friends to help me. I don't want to be in this place once a year for the rest of my life. I told a friend yesterday that I was going to cut my overtime. She said "you told me that months ago", which is true. I want to change permanently. I need you to tell me when I'm being an idiot, and I need you to keep telling me that when I twist and turn and try to show you that it's just temporary, just one week of going the extra mile.
For months now I've let people down because I don't have time for them and I'm surprised there's anyone left.
Somehow when you realise you're rubbish and weak and that everyone has seen it even before you... you feel ok!
More thoughts on patience
Sometimes patience is a long-term thing, but sometimes we need it in an intense way in the short-term too. A lot has changed over the past fortnight, the upshot being that Tim and I might get together a lot sooner than we had thought originally. This is the week of praying and fasting about it. What I want is to get hold of patience even in this short week until Sunday.
In other news, yesterday my dad had 6 hours of heart surgery and has come through it. Thanks everyone who called or texted.
Patience and fruit
Wow! So much can change in a fortnight. His name is Tim.
Last night we had the dreaded conversation, the one that begins with "so these few weeks have been amazing" and ends with "oh God". To cut a long story short, he has promised God he won't start a relationship in 2007. I'm am at once happy, sad, excited and peaceful. This year is going to be ridiculously hard. The least patient girl in the world is going to have patience built into her DNA and the most wonderful man in the world will have the joy of knowing he's following his father. Wow!
My housemates don't get it. They're really worried about me. They're saying I'm going to get hurt, that it's ridiculous the way Christians do these random denying-yourself-relationships things. But I realised as I spoke to them that even if this is actually wrong, and even if we're being ridiculous and in fact even if as a result of this we lose what we could have had, I'd still rather do this. Because in doing this I'm not putting me first, I'm putting God first, and then Tim, and so in some ways it can't possibly be wrong.
Oh but it will be very hard!