Take Two of These and Call Me in the Morning

What Herb and I need is God. We need him to weave sense out of the shards of our hateful comments, our tears, our pain. We need him to show us the light of our laughter, our kisses, and our tender kindnesses. We need him to unload the baggage we brought into this union. But Herb clings to his sleek red Jack Spade bag . . . and I refuse to give up my vintage teal and yellow paisley suitcase. We need him to massage us back to health and knead us into one. We need to confess and repent and forgive. We need to laugh and thank and play and pray. We know. But we stand here . . . intimidated? Or perhaps prideful. More likely, we stand here hindered by our own integrity, if that is possible. We want to approach God. We need to. But resist, for fear of treating him like a dose of Maalox . . . carelessly dumping heaping spoonfuls of the holy one into our predetermined drink of choice and expecting smooth and easy results within moments. We don't want to treat him this way . . . so we don't treat him at all.