Pardon me, Ma'am, but are you aware that you smell like fish?

You know how people who have bad breath never seem to know that they have bad breath? You know how that seems to be as true of many people with obnoxious personality traits? Do you ever wonder if you're that person and nobody is saying anything?

I wonder that a lot. Any time someone leaves me thinking, wow, interacting with them is unpleasant, my next thought is, shoot, am I that way? and I take great pains NOT to be that way. Such great pains, in fact, that I often end up doing, well, nothing, because I don't want to be annoying when I do it.

That may all sound extreme, and I'll admit that it's agonizing, but I bet you can think of someone right now who you wish were that willing to take a hint or learn from other people's mistakes. I was once in close proximity to someone who was thoroughly oblivious to what it was like to interact with her. It hurt people, it even cost her jobs (yes, plural), and she never saw the pattern, nor did she take it well when those left in her wake spoke up. I never, ever want to be that way, and the thought that we might be in any way alike scared the heck out of me.

I've spent a lot of time wondering why I don't have what I want, and why things aren't the way I want them to be. Are all the things lacking in my life a result of inadequacies in me? I have to stop asking those sorts of questions because they drive me crazy; I become like some kind of bobble-head, my brain all disproportionate from over-thinking, except the head is made of lead, weighing me down, and I keep crashing. But the question remains, How do you know? How do you know if you've messed up your own life, or if that's just how things go? And if you can't fix yourself, should you expect anything new to happen?

For me, God comes into this. It often doesn't mean I have answers; it just means I direct my questions at Him. Other Christians may have different experiences, about how they hear from God, how they feel loved by Him. I do sometimes hear from Him, but I'm one of those Christians who spends most of her time struggling as much with her relationship with God as she does with the world around her. This is how I'm able to be miserable in the most benign situations, like some Romantic poet who wanders around feeling misunderstood, looking for a beautiful cliff so he can fling himself off of it.

I believe God changes us, and I've seen Him change me, but everything is so slow it's maddening. Over the last several years I've lost optimism, lost my sense of destiny -- the conviction that God has a plan for me. In their place I've developed a sense of poverty, feeling like I never have enough, and like it doesn't matter that I don't have enough. I feel like God wants me to suck it up, or like He's waiting for me to cool off and come back when you have a better attitude, young lady. Intellectually, I know these things aren't true of God, but my heart thinks they are, and it's been waiting for Him to prove it wrong.

I've been asking God a question. Usually it's rhetorical, but lately I've been brave enough to ask it in earnest: Lord, what are you waiting for?