When I see you, sitting there across the table from me, my eyes begin to dance about your face. And even if you can’t tell, there is a smile behind my lips as I look on and take in all of you. And just then, you look back at me, engaging my eyes. And without explanation, the color begins to drain my skin, pulling back through my veins. There is nothing to shield you from seeing me, as there I sit with burning cheeks and invisible skin.

Your gaze seems so light and friendly, yet by the time it comes to me, it’s reach is insurpassable. It makes me transparent, allowing you to gaze into me. Almost instinctively I reach for the edges of my sweater, pulling them in around me, as if I could divert you from looking through my shell and seeing my heart pounding out of my chest.

It feels silly, it feels like a Junior High bathroom, filled with so many girls.  It feels like public speaking, or being late for a meeting. It feels like a hole that reached up to swallow me.  As as I sit there in our restaurant, looking at you, the voice of reason comes into my head, scoffing “You are a grown woman! This is ridiculous, you are acting crazy!”

But then you look back at me, and let your mouth turn up in a little smile, and my reason is rebutted with utmost conviction. My skin goes back to being on fire, and my nervous blood pumps through my veins, once again drawing me into translucent mess of butterflies. And even though the rational of logic seem to make so much sense, they can’t be helped. I know that you can read my thoughts, you can see through my skin, you know exactly what I want you to see…and what I don’t want you to see. I sit there staring back at you until I have to remind myself to breathe. Inhale, exhale, slowly. Gaze back with a certain fierceness that says “I can see you too. My skin is not the only that can become invisible.”

And just then you reach across the table and take my hand. This time the smile comes out from behind my lips and crosses my teeth. My cheeks blush pink, but so are yours. Your hands are a little bit rough, but feel good when pressed against mine. And in that moment, I let the edges of my sweater slip through my hands, allowing them to drape open ever so slightly. As you smile at me and I smile back at you, and you see beneath my shell, through my skin, to my pounding heart. Suddenly, as we sit across from each other, looking at each other through our invisible skin, it feels good to be seen.

Scowl crosses forehead. Deep and pressed, much like that of a pouting four year old. Brown soft curls frame a tear stained face, complete with small sniffles of snot off a button nose. Big brown eyes, edged in red from salty tears. Slightly slitted eyes look forward with a sense of uncertainty, almost as if to say “I don’t know how I feel about you.”

The difference is however, the little girl with the tear stained face has long sense passed her fourth birthday. In fact, there have been 20 birthdays since this type of tantrum would have been expected. In some ways, the pout hasn’t changed since her last four-year-old-tantrum. But even in its similarities, some things have changed to make it all more serious. In her mid-twenties, the game is bigger now, the stakes are higher. We aren’t playing for cookies and barbies anymore. And when the four year old gets jipped its only the matter of jax and dolls. The world has gotten bigger since then, giving us so much more to be jaded about. 

Even through the tear stained scowl, there is a little bit of a smile, an acknowledgement that this is trivial and childlike.  Because it is. Who tells God “You stay on that side of the room, because I didn’t get my way, so I don’t know if I want to be close with you anymore.”? Does that happen in the life of an adult? Well, it is happening, so a better question is, SHOULD it happen in the life of an adult?

And aside from the inner four year old who knows they are being a child, there are still some deep seeded truths, some things that cant be shaken.  Something that says “This isn’t a silly little moment, something so trite and trivial. this is the deep and dying truth of what I have been working on.” I cant seem to get life how I want to, to make it all line just right. And it seems such a cruel joke, even when it does line up just right, it all seems to fall to shit anyhow. And at this point: “enter four year old –  stage left”. Please stamp feel and cry about how the whole thing is jilted, and tainted and shaded, and wrong.

Does the little girl with the big brown eyes and beautiful curls have to to soothed? Does the whole thing need to be rectified? Do we need to rock her to sleep and wipe the tears from her eyes? Does she need to be sufficed by the adult that needs to be rational, logical and sensible? Can we leave it a mess? Can we leave the tantrum hanging in the air and the tears fresh on the face?

Let’s not clean this one. Let’s not convince with trite explanations of how “God is in control, and this is all for the best.” Let’s not box this one up with what “Should be done” and how rational and logical we can make the ending. Let’s side with the indignant kindergartner. We may have been warned, and we should have known that life doesnt work this way, but for once, let’s toss the adult logic and throw a fit.