This is from my journal entry tonight. I include it here because I believe it important for people who know me to know this-it will make more sense at the end of reading this. Please see this as an asking of you to help me with this if you can. It would be greatly appreciated.
Tonight I am reminded of the blessing and need for people in my life. Recent events that have brought that to light have been my date with John last night, church today, our Crusade BBQ, and ice cream with Colin tonight. Each of those times were incredibly full and blessed.
Yet while remaining thankful for these people and this time, I find myself sitting here tonight lonely. I’m only a couple of hours removed from being with people, but it feels much longer. I find the fullness I had while being with these people has been replaced with a yearning. A yearning for companionship, and a desire to not feel alone.
Being self-sufficient in the ways I am by nature is certainly easier. It allows me to derive all I need from You and myself, dear Lord. You know I can easily immerse myself in my own world, whether it be the things I do, what I create, and what I dream. It’s almost this aspect of creating my own world that appears and functions the way I want it to. The problem with that though, is that it’s just a temporary though often long-standing illusion. Self-sufficiency only supplies for a time.
My instinct would be to say that being self-sufficient renders less heartache. It has felt that way with me. However, what I believe creates that is my walling myself up in my own world so that I am left generally unaffected. It leaves me steady because it protects myself from the elements.
Yet, I think I’ve come to believe that even the strongest walls are not meant to always stand. Somehow, through one force or another, they are overcome. With me, I’d probably say it is a typhoon that does it. A typhoon builds up over time with the forces around it to eventually unleash a powerful force. And when it finally starts, it does. It usually lasts a few days until it exhausts all of the energy and force it had built up and no longer has any reserves to keep going. It then dissipates. My life, particularly the emotional side, can often resemble a typhoon. They don’t come many in number and often come in certain seasons and times, but when they come, they make quite a presence. In the majority of the rest of the time in between, things are calm.
These typhoons of mine overcome my walls. They immerse the interior of it with every ounce of it-leaving me drenched, saturated, unable to run or hide. Instead, I am stuck in the middle of it trying to cope and escape but hopeless in doing so. I usually just have to wait out the storm and not let it “destroy” me. And when the storm is over-I’m exhausted. It’s like there’s this period of drying out, warming up, and recovering in which I’m just numb to everything emotional. When that’s over, then I can function again. I think that should be the last storm, that surely I’ve made it through this one and there need be no more.
I then try to live my life outside the walls. I remember how being in the inside of those walls in the storm left me trapped. So, I try to allow myself to be exposed, functioning in community and connecting myself with others. Praise be to You that You help me do it. I know sometimes I retreat back to my walls of self-sufficiency because I’m either tired of being outside or I simply want to be comfortable. But Lord, I’m trying to live outside those walls. To know what it is to be truly vulnerable and live life with others and not just on occasions. There is progress made; You encourage me with showing me that.
But the storm I thought was the last wasn’t. Another comes. The typhoon builds up its strength and makes its way again. Now I am trying not to run back to my shelter of walls but rather leave myself exposed so I don’t become trapped. That somehow, in being outside with others, they will know and recognize that I am in the middle of a storm rather than being in a solitary force unable to cry or articulate a need for help. And also, that they would know that things just aren’t easy going for me all the time. That they would know that I am subject to the building up of many different isolated forces, all combining to produce huge storms of passion and emotion that render me helpless. That even if I am not able to cry out for help, that they would see and come. That’s where being exposed is necessary.
Lord, I know I must be realistic and realize these patterns of storms may not cease altogether with one, as this has been so much the norm for me for so long. But I know I need to seek You and allow You to teach me how to let those storms subside in both number and strength until they are one day eliminated outright. You have been good in revealing what this is in my life and what it does.
I was reading about typhoons and there is this section that talks about how during the 1960’s and 70’s the United States Government sought to artificially dissipate typhoons by a variety of methods. The most tangible one was by towing icebergs into the tropical oceans to cool the water, thus inhibiting its development. Though the theory was correct, it was not an effective solution because the storms were far too large for it to have an effect.
I feel like the United States Government then, now. I feel like I’m learning about these storms and how they function and what they do. I feel like a boat towing an iceberg to the center to hopefully nip the storm in the bud, or at least lessen its effects. It just doesn’t quite work.
But I know the solution does not lie in what I can do or figure out, ultimately. Those things may help or perhaps point me in the right direction, but the storms are so large that they need a larger God to control and sway them. I know You are that God, my Lord. You know how I often feel spit up and tossed out by the typhoon that I’m left exhausted and numb to everything, even anything in trying to deal with these storms before the next one comes. You know the little energy I can have left. But Lord, I come to You now offering all I can with this and asking You to take the rest. I ask You that You allow the storms to subside and one day cease. I ask that I can learn to function on a normal human level with passions and emotions consistently-one that ebbs like an ocean, not a storm system derived from it.
Because where I am tonight is on the end tails of one of these storms. I’m in the midst of severe emotion and passion while dealing with its counterpart-numb to everything as a result of exhaustion. I’m feeling this yearning for companionship-one severe, and part of me wants to go back to the walls of self-sufficiency to be exempt from it. Yet, praise be to You, I am growing somewhat tired of those walls and becoming more ready to stand outside of it. I need not be so strong all the time, deriving from the strength that comes from residing in the walls I’ve built protecting myself from being affected. That only leaves me isolated. Being outside those walls is vulnerable and exposed, and I pray that with it doesn’t come a storm of its own due to the ills of my passion and emotion. But Lord, moreso I pray that it becomes a place where I can stay. That it becomes a place where I can heal from this last storm, and simply be where I am rather than having to cry out for help. And when the next storm comes, I’ll already be where I need to be-in the midst of companionship that will see the storm I am in and come to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment