[extravagance]

Loneliness is a strange luxury.

Sometimes I just don't feel like I fit. At all. At my job, with my friends, with any human male, or with myself. Sure, some of it comes from that deep place of thinking I'm better than other people. But I think a lot of it is that longing for some sort of completion that I can only feel in whispers in this life.

I'm trying to make some decisions. About my life, my future, who I am, what I'm doing next and where I'm going. And everyone has a different agenda. Those people who value my safety want me to stay. To be secure. Those who value highest their own adventure charge me to go forth with trust. They all ask if I've prayed.

Sure, I've prayed. But sometimes, the praying isn't the hard part. It's the listening. I'm asking for help, but I have no idea how to listen.

There are books galore on how to pray to get what you want, but I need the prequel. I need to know how to know what I want. Or maybe how to recognize it when it shows up. That'd be nice.

I'm lonely tonight. Tearfully so. I've washed my candlelit salad dinner dishes for one, checked Twitter a few times, finished the last details on my bedroom update, and took a minute to be grateful for the peace of my cozy little house. Sometimes I really do want a house full of guests or maybe some screaming kids. But I have to remember whatever I have, whatever my circumstances, my luxury is in who I know, not what I have.

I do have the assurance that God is good. That He will never ask me for more than I can give or satisfy me with less than Himself.

But is He on a desert island? In the flashy majesty of the Southwestern desert? Or maybe here, right where I am?

I'm listening. With luxurious ears.