image courtesy of Vitaliy P.
I am one to burn bridges. I walk with matches lit, hoping that there be reason to drop them to the ground where they will destroy any evidence or past peril before the my feminine fingertips are scorched in the least. If every day you pass over any number of bridges, I burn at least half of them within a six month shadow of time.

Here in this town, it is uncommon that you are not part of a church. I used to be part of a church. When I first moved, I looked, found, and settled with the first group of smiling faces that didn't question me, challenge me, or hurt me too much. Isn't that, after all, all you can ask of any group of people who intend to love you? After a year of investing in them, or so I thought, I had been heart broken, trampled, and forgotten by these people. And, now another nine months after finally burning the bridge that kept me near them, I left.

Or so I thought.

It's a small town, this town. And I run into THEM everywhere. Today, and almost every other day I faithfully attend gainful employment, I see someone who is still on the other side of that bridge. Curious eyes and flapping lips question me..."Are you still going?" "No?!" "Where then?" And the stinger today, for some reason it felt like a stinger..."At least you're doing something..." Like with out them, with out faithful journey over the bridge every Sunday I am unsaved, unclean, unholy in some way. Little do they know that those on either side of the bridge are dressed in the same clothes.

But, the conversation with the curious eyes today made me immediately think...did I really burn that bridge? Why do I think so fondly of all the passages over it, if I burned it, and it's gone and no longer available to me? Do I dare tread the earth there?