It is my song, you see. It is the music that sweetens and filters everything, transforming what could be dreary drudgery into dance. It’s the flute behind the unsettling curtain of night drawing me towards its melodic Home whenever I am blinded by exhaustion or emotion.

You’ve been contemplating a get-away with someone you love. While still in the dream-phase, all things seem possible, but at departure’s approach, the conflicts between each individual’s plan become more pronounced.

Take a deep breath. Inhale that notion.

And notice the voices that almost immediately rise to contradict the sacred truth that you are His Beloved.

You’ve anticipated this day. As your season wanes, ebbing into the uncharted change which lies ahead, the shoreline gives way to the first hints of ocean. You’ve become increasingly aware of both the loss of the known and the openness of the unexplored horizon before you.

I know there are people for whom longing is a stranger. This is not for them. This is for those of us whose hearts are hungry for more than anyone can give, who have tried to be content with less, and who are simultaneously exhausted and defiant in the pursuit of – of what?

I almost missed this lunch with me daughter. After a season of unexpected responsibilities piling upon my already overflowing plate, I felt ground down with any sense of fun and freedom morphed into to-do lists. It is our first day of spring break, and I have already budgeted every minute of every day.

It happens again. That same, crippled communication where both of us are delivering well-worn lines, both of us aware that we are trapped here. Neither of us wants this. Neither of us knows how to break the cycle.

“There were just people everywhere,” Ayisha Jessa, 31, a climber from London who recently visited Everest’s base camp, told BBC Magazine. At the nearby village of Namachi, she said, “It’s completely commercialized — everything is intended for the Western traveller.”

In theory, I like a challenge. In many arenas, the adrenaline from contending with the unknown or untried evokes a sense of being alive that few other experiences parallel. I remember the tickling sensation in my 9-year-old tummy, my eyes following the railroad tracks in Aalborg, Denmark all the way into the horizon.

The roofers came! After sixteen years of dreading the tropical downpours that relentlessly revealed new leaks, I can barely believe it will actually end. As if to emphasize the forces we’re up against, our rescuers were only able work the first day of the first week because, refusing to acknowledge the calendar’s dry season, pounding rains impeded reparation’s progress.

I am pondering the idea of public image. Not for the famous paparazzi-hunted few, but for us regular people, for whom the constantly emerging social media seem a necessary connection to our world. Technically challenged and philosophically old, I resisted Facebook and even e-mail for a long time.

The browning Christmas tree awaits its final fate at the curb. It’s the kind of grey January day that signals the return to schedules, alarm clocks, routine. I like it. I find beauty in the constants. But after weeks of family sleeping everywhere and tripping in line outside our one bathroom, an aching emptiness throbs in my throat.

I have struggled with modern Christmas. If I don’t watch it, I turn into the Grinch, cynical at all the commercialism and stressing obligations. But my frustration with the neon light replacing the true Light only turns my own heart dark.

Wild horses, manes flowing in the wind, thundering hooves. Isn’t that what we associate with freedom? Beholding its savage majesty from a distance, don’t we ache to be swept up in their speed – to ride or be part of the herd? But we cannot get close. From our vantage point, we behold the idyllic illusion, rarely considering how vulnerable these beauties are. They are completely subject to the elements, much more exposed than their strength and size would suggest.

Confidential cries cross the boundary of silence to my inbox in response to a survey of relationships. Humbled by their trust, I recognize my own struggles in many of these e-mails. There are nuts and bolts to be learned in long-term interactions -decoding of male / female languages and lessons passed from the seasoned to the less experienced.

When did the sense of adventure wane? Had I become so adult and responsible that maintaining the daily to-do list was my highest aspiration? Sure, what seems natural to so many women:

Do you have any idea how much tenderness you evoke? As you grapple with loneliness, friendships, and the conflict between permanence and transience, the fresh glow of childhood trust still peers through your eyes, even as maturity’s firmness is settling into your face.

This is a story of courage, perseverance, and victory. A shy six-year-old little Hunter first came to me, his teacher at children’s church, with a depth of soul that squeezed my heart. He climbed my lab and searched me eyes for something only he knew. We became friends, and I sensed it was a precious honor.

“Is it cheating if I pray to God now after so many years away, ignoring Him?” My precious friend had lived her life in pursuit of men’s love and theater’s success, sporadically but never permanently achieving both, and usually feeling more battered and confused than satisfied by it.

I just turned 47. After more than two decades in America, I still haven’t grasped why it’s considered impolite to ask a woman her age. I am so relieved not to be 17! The world was spinning then, as an Alice-in -Wonderland concoction of disconnected experiments, and I didn’t know where to find solid ground.