Happy Heather's soap opera

I have now been blogging for 2.5 years, at least once a week. My blogs have changed considerably over time: in the beginning I wrote pithy little pieces about scientific facts and theological ideas. Gradually my blogs have become more and more like diary entries, and more and more personal. Sometimes I feel like I am just talking to myself and I have no idea who might be reading it; other times I am extremely careful with each word because I imagine who might be reading it. Once in a while I bump into someone who mentions something I wrote in a blog and I feel startled that they know such intimate details about my life.
But there are a couple of areas of my life that I have never written about in my blog entries. Never ever, and for very good reason. It is because they are too personal. After all, it’s one thing to make people laugh about my adventures cutting up cadavers or nursing patients or selling teapots, but it’s quite another thing to share with the world how I feel about having my heart broken by a guy or how much I’ve agonized about my decisions with school or those days when I feel like life is crashing all around me and I’m a horrible person. But they happen, and they happen to everyone. Not only that, but I know my friends and family care, and I know that to the degree I am vulnerable, they are encouraged.
Of course some people can read between the lines. Perhaps you might have guessed that something is going on between me and someone named Robin Mercer living in Kelowna. My sister, who is my fashion consultant and my advisor on social graces and appropriate behavior, has counseled me that I should stop introducing him as my friend because after all, we’re in love.
I met Robin 6 years ago in Calgary at a conference where it snowed buckets, and we ended up eating pizza in a hotel room with friends and family in the middle of the night. The first moment I saw him I felt like he would one day be my husband. Yet we’ve taken a long and tortuous path to get to each other. Last summer I was sitting with my friend Yvette, crying my eyes out because my heart had been broken by yet another man. I told her, “I’ll never fall in love again”. She said, “Heather, there’s plenty other men out there who would be lucky to have you”. “There was only one other guy I was interested in” I told her, “and that’s Robin Mercer, but I’ve totally lost touch with him”.
“Robin?” She replied. “He was at our house for dinner this week.”
So we started out as facebook friends, oddly enough. Last summer we lay in a parking lot and watched shooting stars and he held my hand and I thought perhaps I’m crazy to be falling for him, I don’t know if I can handle having my heart broken again.
Except he hasn’t broken my heart. He is kind of quiet, which is nice, because we don’t have to compete for space to talk, and he is tall, which is good because I fit under his arm perfectly when we walk together. He tells me I am beautiful when I feel I am not and he is very clever and knows most of my interesting facts before I tell them, but he listens anyway, and doesn’t mind hearing them again.
We’ve spent most of our time apart the last several months, but I am moving his way soon and even though I grew up in Vancouver and almost everything I love is here, in a way going to Kelowna is a kind of coming home too. Last summer as I prayed about my future I begged God to give me someone to share my adventures with. I stood on a street corner near my house and as I watched, several planes flew past with their landing gear down, towards Vancouver airport. In my heart the Lord’s still voice spoke. I have more solitary adventures for you, Heather.
Last fall in Antigua and this past winter in Champaign, I truly understood feeling alone; feeling invisible in a room full of people, feeling abandoned in a quiet room all by myself day after day. My own thoughts echoing in my head and making me feel like I was going crazy. I have to admit my blog entries were much more chipper than I was feeling. Who wants to read about me whining, anyway?
But I also learned what it is to be quiet with God, and to know he is there even though you cannot feel him, and to trust in his love when it doesn’t feel loving.
My plans for my life have been dismantled, little by little, but it is okay, I have the feeling deep inside that the adventures God has planned for me are far more exciting than the adventures Heather Davies had planned. And best of all I have the company of someone dear to share them with.
So there, I’ve broken my rule and told you about my love life. Perhaps you’ll stop reading now, which would be too bad, because I have an interesting potential job in Kelowna which should supply hullabaloo-like fodder, and who knows, I might end up working in the hospital or doing all manner of things that turn out more unusual than expected. At any rate I hope to greet those adventures with a smile on my face and a laugh from deep within.