It's a rainy day outside, and I'm sitting on an old couch in my living room--a treat to be at home, to smell familiar smells, hear familiar sounds, anticipate love and comfort without admitting to my sometimes overwhelming need of them--in pain because I've got two huge canker sores in my mouth. While it is fun to tell people I've the herpes complex virus (the horror!), each word becomes harder to say, each bite of food a little harder to take. Per my father's advice, then, I've soaked some cotton in a saturated salt-water/baking soda solution and stuck it in my mouth. And though the initial sting of sodium chloride against open wound is excruciating, I'm reconciled to some sort of "ends justify the means" mentality, aware that whatever ungodly pain I'm subjecting myself to is, indeed, for the best, Nicole, so suck it up. Any discomfort now will end in renewed health and vigor, and I'll be rewarded for withstanding the aching.

I don't know if I want to believe that, but I also don't know any other way. Is it better to just "suffer through," life feigning hope? or to make preemptive judgments and anticipate failure/pain and pull out before life starts to hurt? I wish I wasn't as afraid of taking risks. I wish I was more willing to let things progress naturally rather than take them into my oft incompetent and far-too-small hands...are the ends worth the byproducts?

Word of the summer: wait. Just...wait.


But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:25, NIV)