Your Attention, Please!

I wrote this piece just after I had broken my ankle and had surgery to rebuild it, and came to decidedly discontent place!

By:  Jana Greene

Okay.  You have my attention.  You have my full attention.

I have been avoiding you, I admit; although I’m not sure why.  We’ve been on pretty good terms lately, I believed.  Things look rosy from the outside right now, but inside….the gnawing starts. Running right under the surface of my contentedness?   Molten lava.   I suppose it should have been sign that we aren’t on such good terms – that I was starting to feel contentment.  I should know by now that my comfort level with you is not your comfort level with me.  How do I keep forgetting that?

You want more.

Spend some time with me, you’ve been whispering.

“Oh, I will!”  I say.  “Let me just go to the store/update my status on Facebook/make a phone call/clean the kitchen, and then I will spend some time with you.”  And you always “let” me, because you are a gentleman and will not intrude.  And because I still feel, a little smugly perhaps, that I can handle things right now, so I delay making time for You.

You understand, I know.  You understand busy.

I have something to tell you, you say. 

But I cannot be bothered to crack open Your book – your letter to me – right now.  “I will definitely check it out in a little while,” my spirit says, full of all the best intentions.  And I busy my mind instead with the most trivial and mindless of things instead.

If a dear friend   told me to be expecting a letter in the mail soon that would directly impact my life in the most positive way imaginable, I would be waiting by the mailbox each day!   And when the long-awaited letter arrived, would I open it right away, or put it on the shelf and forget about it?   Wouldn’t I want to know the news right away?

And you are the Dearest of friends to me, yet I don’t return your communication sometimes.

Often times.

The problem with my superficial “content” is that it is so easily broken.  It takes  little for my fickle spirit to become discontent.  Any number of things can break the glossy, fragile bubble.  But You aren’t all that interested in bubbles anyway – pretty shells filled with nothing.

So here I am, needing you again, and so I come.

Spend some time with me?  I whimper, the most selfish part of me needing a favor.  The noblest part of me, just needing your presence. 

And you don’t withhold your communication from me.  You aren’t too busy.  You crouch down next to me, sorry that I am hurting.  Sorry that things aren’t going so well for me right-this-minute.  You remind me to open that book – Your letter.

I have something to tell you.