Common theme of three conversations today:
How do I develop friendships in which it's okay to have needs?
Those that know me in person and by blog have recognized the dichotomy. The fragility and melancholy tone reflected on these web pages do not match the confidence that I exhibit in person. I feel like I'm beginning to understand the seeming contradiction, and it begins with a perception.
I don't believe that people are comfortable with my having needs.
So I turned to the internet! Certainly there must be fellow bloggers that see me as more than a spiritual perfectionist or an ever present counselor. Surely I'm allowed faults here.
It dates at least to college: other Christians asking how I'm doing as a prerequisite to talk about themselves. It came to the point where I felt patronized when someone "reached out" to me. I figured that we may as well cut through the facade and begin discussing their personal business.
When I entered professional ministry, it only got worse. I sensed discomfort whenever I admitted a spiritual struggle, and my fellow church members acted disinterested in my spiritual needs. My relationships were built on one transaction -- I supply the wisdom, their need is met.
I'd become so accustomed to feeling disqualified from having needs that I began to dismiss them myself. I convinced myself that my flesh needed to die more; if I required anything to meet my own needs, I must not be close enough to God. I couldn't have been further from the truth.
Learning how to need God at an advanced age is difficult enough; learning how to need other believers is tougher yet. If only for the time required to type these posts, I'm uninterrupted here. My struggles are not privy to being "1-uped" by my readers, but the good majority are not aware that my Christian world needs me perfect. I cognitively realize that it's a game I can't win -- it's completely unreasonable to live without my needs being met. However, I've become so conditioned that I don't know where to start.
Where is my audience of unsolicited love and grace, and if in Christ alone, how do I recondition myself to need Him without trying to offer my filthy rags?
1 comment:
The eye is the window to the soul.
Only for you, it’s really the pen which is the window to your soul. That’s why I keep coming back to your blog. I’ve tried to stop reading it occasionally (for reasons which I should explain to you someday because I think it would be good for you to understand), but I always miss seeing in the window and come back. I’m so glad that you invited me to see your online world and were willing to introduce me to the truth of who you really are. That seems incredibly scary to me, that you’ve let your real-life friends into your online exposition. It’s been a rough transition as I’m finally seeing (I think) glimpses of the true you, and haven’t quite learned yet how to interact on that basis. God give me grace as I try to remember the pen when I see the confident exterior.
THANK YOU for being willing to risk showing the truth. I pray my sinful self will forgo its obsession with self in order to be a good friend to you, and that He will show me how that plays out when your needs aren’t clearly delineated.
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