full head, busy feet, and empty heart

"The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone."

from "home burial", by robert frost.

at church yesterday the pastor said something which really stood out to me, and that was that a sure sign that passion has leaked out of our relationship with God is to be in a state of: "full head, busy feet, and empty heart."

this exactly describes how i feel. how i have felt, increasingly, over the last year. i have fallen out of touch with God and realized that He is not my first love, if He ever was. it has been disconcerting to realize that i have never given him any part of myself that was not conditional, that i didn't want (and expect) back, in full at some later point.

and i don't know how, or if, i can get to the point that i want to be. or, that i know i should be at. i just do not have the mental willpower to work on this. and i do not have the courage to ask for help to do this. i would rather spend my energies on things i can control, on things that are neat and orderly and easily established.

at work, doing experiments, reading papers, getting things done and having set starts and stops. on my house: baking, cooking, cleaning--where i can clearly outline accomplishment. where i can praise myself for a job well done. where i know it is MY work, and MY effort, and my mental and physical capacity that will work it out.

these last two weekends have been exhausting. times of good-byes but not hellos. of ending, but not knowing where or what to begin. i see life right now as a tiny trickle of water trying to make it through the swirling sand dune. i don't mean that to be overly dramatic, because that is not the way i feel. i'm too tired for that.