Crossing lines...

I have felt the desire to blog lately but haven’t really had a sense of what to blog about.

Then, in trying to find something inspirational to send to Monica to wish her luck on her interview tomorrow (today by the time I post this – good luck, sweetie!), I found this on storypeople.com. Thank you, Brian Andreas.

“I have too much to lose, she said, if I cross that line. Like what? I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line & I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.”

We spend our whole lives avoiding crossing lines – picket lines, yellow lines, invisible lines we’re not even aware of. Those are the hardest ones, those invisible lines. What are they? Where do they come from? How do we find them if they’re invisible?

This ties into the all-consuming conversations lately about the men in our lives and all that goes with that, hence, all-consuming. My friends and I feel that there are lines there that have been laid down that we don’t dare cross.

But what if we did? What if we did take that bull by the ever-hesitant horns and vault over that line written in chalk on the floor? What if we smudged it a bit and moved it ever so slightly to a more advantageous spot? What if we ignored it altogether?

“What would I lose if I cross my line…”

That’s the tough question. I would lose my…

How about fear? I have begun to learn in the last year that crossing lines doesn’t mean finding pain and disaster on the other side. Of course, most of my line crossing has been fairly safe, mostly involving creative endeavors in my life. My biggest line cross was the end of June last year, when I saw a life on the other side of my line and I decided to leap over it and grab that life without worrying about crossing a line.

Fear keeps us all on this side of our line, not allowing us to even peek over that line in case there might be something we want on the other side. If we peer over that line, we might see another set of eyes peering back over their own line back at us, wanting, needing, begging someone to lead them over their lines. But the thing is this, we’d have to cross our own lines to reach out to those eyes – no matter how appealing – and we don’t seem to be able to do that. That line, though drawn in Magic Marker or chalk or by our own toes in the sand, might as well be a brick wall 18 miles high and as wide as a continent.

“What would I lose if I cross my line…”

Excuses. As long as I stay on this side of my line, I’ll always have an excuse for not crossing that line. It’s too soon, it’s too hard, it’s too soon, he’s too close, we’re too… the list is longer than I could ever post on this blog. That line protects me from being hurt, from being open, from being injured. Excuses allow me to hide behind that line, keep that line in front of me so that those eyes on the other side of the line won’t be able to see me and reach me. And maybe those excuses keep that other pair of eyes from reaching out from behind their line to help me climb over mine.

“What would I lose if I cross my line…”

My heart. If I cross the biggest line in front of me right now, I could lose my heart and maybe not ever be able to reach the eyes on the other side of his line. That’s the biggest chance of all – crossing your line, hoping that the person you’re crossing it for finds the strength to somehow grab you and be pulled across their line to join you in the middle. Because most people won’t cross their line. Most people live their entire lives behind that line without ever poking a toe over it. Maybe they’ve crossed it before and lost their heart to the middle. So they’ve gone back and hidden behind the line again, not ever daring to even venture a toe over it. There are some that seem to leapfrog over their lines when it comes to so many things in their lives but when it comes to their heart, that line becomes the wall again and their eyes disappear behind it. But if I never venture over that line, how can I know if he will venture over his? We cannot spend our lives peering across the lines, protecting our hearts, and hope to find happiness or love along the way.

“What would I lose if I cross my line…”

Nothing. Everything. It’s time to find out which…

See you on the other side.