It began this year, in the last couple of months-- the dimming that I have heard so much about, that I knew would be coming and that began before I realized it, stole into our lives quietly so that one day we were celebrating and adoring and the next we were hushed, careful around each other, tiptoeing.

We've both noticed it, we've both tried to talk about it a couple of times-- started conversations we didn't know how to carry, finish.  Held each other and decided on steps to take, ways to get back what we had somehow misplaced.  But still we were tired and short, drifting between defense and offense, not seeming to end on the same side.

We are in the middle of it but we are aware of it and we are girding ourselves, we are facing this together after months of hiding and smoothing over, constantly smoothing.  This place is familiar, too, because  I have been here often with Him and so it is not quite so scary-- the dimming.  In fact, there is a strange comfort here.  I know this valley, I've walked it many times, nodded to my old friends patience and perseverance.  I learned to really praise here, I learned to cling to a God I did not feel.  

I have been dangerously passive-- this has been my part and I can quickly excuse myself.  I am transitioning out of a busy job into small jobs.  I am spending time with myself at my desk with this computer and my books.  I am struggling to govern my time with grace instead of guilt.  I am goal driven and suddenly I am here- in this ambiguous "writing world" and I will probably drown myself a couple of times before I figure out how to be here.  Because of all this, I need things from him that I don't know how to say, things I don't even know I need until days later.

And he married me, a shifty complicated girl who one day wants to move to the big city and the next is crying over leaving.  Me, with fire in my heart and cutting, cutting words when pushed and who sometimes fails to notice this great man, forgets about his heart and his Spirit my words are thoughtlessly crashing into.  

I could say this is winter.  It is all winter.  Winter is always hard.  We are the best when we are playing together outside and we have been inside far too long.  But what I need to say, what I have been struggling to say is this: It is me.  It is me.   It is me.  Abba has switched up my identity again, has taken things and not replaced them and so I am here, nasty and confused, and I forget still that other than Christ, the greatest thing about me is the good man He gave me.   

I am excited to move out of this quiet place.  I am excited to get loud, make a ruckus, push again.  And I know we'll be back here, I sometimes think the valley grows me, us, more than the high places.  So I am thankful for the lonely, slow spaces He brings us to.  I am thankful for the breaking and the rebuilding.  I am thankful for a man who is not afraid of dimming, who does not forget our greatness when we are no longer living greatly.  And for the way our God makes glory out of us, two sinners wrestling with our thorns.