Friends and Ghosts

A few weeks ago, both Jahred and Bradford were gone and I could not sleep. My room felt suffocating and dangerous. So in the middle of the night I went into their room and crawled into Jenna's old bed (which the subsequent room mates have used) and felt the weight of being an other. I heard the dogs pounding across the living room, Bjork mewing on the porch, other flatmates closing doors and all the pets we have crawling around in the walls. I listened to the fan creak and the bushes scratch the window. I experienced my house from another room, and I missed all the other people that experienced it. All the people that were sleeping somewhere else now. I wonder if they ever think about that room.

Bradford moves out in a few days, Jahred a few weeks after him. My heart hurts when I think about it. When I walk into my house and pass that room, sometimes I feel like it is filled with ghosts.

I see Beth tapping away at her computer, her brown hair tucked behind her ears and a counseling book in her lap. Beside her Jenna sits on the floor, flipping through magazines for fashion and art ideas. Dana and McKenzie lounge on the bed, their laptops out as they discuss church and school and life. Jahred reads on his air mattress bed and Bradford does yoga.

I don't want any more ghosts, there will be no more room mates. I will take out the bed and put in a couch and my sewing machine and line the walls with racks of dresses and books. The ghosts can keep me company as I work and dream.

I am in a stage in my life where many people have left or are leaving. But I remain the same. In the same house, and as of Monday, return to my old place of work. This distresses me. I am tired of people moving in and out and on. I am sad to look into a face I love and know I will not see it again for quite sometime.

This is where the idea of a husband, of a consistent friend that won't move away seems incredibly appealing for the first time.

I was explaining this to God in prayer, and I was hit by a realization. I mean, I know it. I say it all the time and we hear it all the time and blah, blah, blah-

But-

What I long for in a friend or a lover, Christ is. Christ will never leave me. He won't move out or get sick of me. I was hit with the full truth that Christ actually, genuinely, for really real likes to hang out with me. I felt in prayer how grateful I was to have this friend that will comfort me when other friends leave and rejoice with me over new relationships. I do not need a husband to anchor me down, I can have that in God. I can tell him about my day and talk to him about everything I experience, knowing he is experiencing it with me. I need to train myself to hear his language, to be more sensitive to the movements and whispers of the spirit. Because that language, that movement and whisper fills me with love and joy and utter gratefulness.

"At that time"—this is God's Message still—
"you'll address me, 'Dear husband!'
Never again will you address me,
'My slave-master!'
And then I'll marry you for good—forever!
I'll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness.
Yes, I'll marry you and neither leave you nor let you go.
You'll know me, God, for who I really am."