About a year ago, I wrote a post on loneliness. I learned that going it mostly alone sucks. Even I get tired of my company and I think I am brilliant…sometimes. I was walking around with a ‘bubble’ up, a little barrier of “don’t talk to me” all over my body language.
It sucks in that bubble.
So I stepped out of it to find many people at church willing to meet me halfway. I’m not a huggy person, still not really; however, I’m much more comfortable with them. I have to be, everyone hugs everyone it seems. Sometimes I will even hug someone.
It’s not a bad thing outside the bubble. Especially with the holidays that just ended. Many lonely people during that time and for once, I was not one of them. I had gained friends.
On top of that, the confidence to hold conversations with people I do not really know grew. I could talk to the ladies in the nursery about how good the fudge from Kilwins is. At the church’s winter festival, Christmas Lane, I served and spoke with a family working on the same team. The oldest daughter was trying to give away her little brother. After it was all over, I sat comfortably listening to Pastor Rod telling us the behind the scenes bloopers of a sermon video involving the pie-face game.
Before, I would have been looking for the door. People seem more willing to open up to me oddly enough considering my mostly expressionless face. I am also more willing to reach out to my hurting friends. Someone I know is around every corner, it seems.
If I can give you one takeaway from this, it is this:
- Meet someone and listen.
- Repeat.
Your willingness to listen to them will make them more willing to listen to you.
A Ronin's Journey 
Except this: I find that when I make my “loneliness” my motive to reach out, I am seduced by flattery that turns into hissing, maybe even a poisonous bite (I was recently bitten pretty deeply by an “organized Bible study group” for being too vocal about my born again status (none of them make that claim–to be born again, and I’m threatening to their religious status quo). When I make other people’s loneliness my hole to fill, I forget to show them the only hole-filler: God. Then I’m the flatterer. Do I have an answer? Not really except I wonder that we need to pool in groups which too easily become flattery/biting and are less likely to be us giving the gospel to people who haven’t heard it. I was hiking this last summer and God showed me the stagnate pools next to a river. The oxygen was choked off and there were dead fish in the pool. It stunk. He told me this is the temptation of the brick and mortar church with “hewn stones.” The river, which was moving, was a healthy place where oxygen got to the fish! I am beginning to think that maybe I should just buy a bus pass and ride busses on days I don’t work and just talk to whomever God puts next to me, and BE the river! May your heart be full, Vance, as you ad-Vance in His Name.
LikeLike
Pingback: Loneliness, A Beatable Enemy | Ink Pastries