So, I've been sleeping a lot.
10 hours a night usually. Unless I can sleep in. Then more.

I've been cracking the spines of new books; smelling the delicious scent of fresh ideas; drinking in the wisdom of fine thinkers, philosophers and poets.

I've been writing music which basically amounts to a pitiful culmination of weak melodies and cliche lyrics that I sing at top volume with my impotent accomplice, my guitar.

Occasionally I wail on my djambe.

Often I sit in the morning sun by the big bay window overlooking the cul-de-sac and meditate, or nap, or dream.

Almost daily I am meeting with and talking to people who love Jesus and see him waving Hope and a Future in their faces.

Often, I cry: sometimes with, usually without, reasonable explanation. At the insurance company. In my car. While playing the piano. When I read something beautiful.

Most days I avoid mounds of paperwork and pending phone conversations. I spend hours psyching myself up or out and then give up and bake cakes.

And all of this, all of this amounts to one thing: waiting. I am waiting.
I wish I could say I was waiting patiently on the Lord. I wish I could say I was being brave and courageous. Mostly I am just waiting. Actually, always, except for moments when I forget, I am waiting.

But today, I feel like enough is enough.

Injustice hounds me like a ravenous beast, devouring bits of hope and leaving a wake of despair. I see too much that is too much and I want to DO something already.

Today I hear that heartbeat again.

I heard it in the desperate plea for partners and people of compassion to unify to build transitional housing for addicts and their children. It was less than an hour later that I ran into a social worker who informed me that one of my girls is an addict herself, at the tender age of 13. After lunch, to pick up the tone, I went to a funeral for a man whose story and situation so closely echoed my dad's I felt like I was living an out-of-body experience. And for desert, la piece de resistance, I listened to a representative of International Justice Mission telling me about the millions, yes millions!, of children living and working in the sex trade.

How long, o lord, will you stand so far off?
Or, how long will you allow me to stand so far off?

Waiting.
Waiting.
Tiring of waiting.
Still waiting.

Tha-thump.
It drums on.