C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Monday, April 08, 2002
I hope I've now had my last major battle with the friendship insecurity and loneliness issues I've been struggling with recently. Yes, I'll probably be lonely to some extent every minute that I walk this earth (as we all are, regardless of how many friends and loved ones, how close, etc.. We ARE, after all, seperated from God). However, I don't have to wallow in it or battle with it.
One friend that lives in Atlanta was up for the week. I had just seen her when I was visiting Atlanta, but that was the first time I'd seen her in over a year and a half, and she'd been my roommate for the first year I lived here. Another friend that I haven't seen in almost a year was also in town, and the timing was mostly because of the first friends' visit. So the bunch of us (the two of them, some in-town friends, and myself) were all gonna get together Saturday night to hang out together and maybe watch a movie and eat dinner and whatnot. Just have a good time, like we did back in the day when the whole bunch of us lived in town. I was babysitting all day Saturday, so I told them that I'd just come over when I got off, around 7:30 or 8. And that's what I did. I arrived to find the apartment dark and locked. So I thought "gee, maybe they all went over to Thor and Angela's". When I went there, the apartment was dark and locked, too. Thor was out with some of his other friends (having never been officially informed of the get-together) and Angela was at work, as she usually is on Saturday nights. So I went home, thinking maybe they'd left a message on my machine during the day that I hadn't gotten since I didn't go home after babysitting. Nope. By this point, every insecurity I've ever felt about my status with this particular group of people (And each individual in the group) had come to the surface and plopped itself down with a very confident thud. "We are right," they told me. "You aren't part of this group, and this is their way of making sure that you know it this time." What could I answer? Not one of these people has contacted me of his or her own initiative since we moved out of the house back in July, and those that weren't still living there at that point hadn't contacted me by choice since well before that. None of these people remembered me on my birthday, or remembered that I'd had one when I talked to them afterwards. Not one of them gives me any indication that she or he thinks about me outside of the times that I'm calling or something. None has come to any of the concerts that I've put on, come with me to other concerts and events I've been to, stopped by my house randomly to say hello, or anything else to let me know that he or she cares about the fact that I'm alive. So what could I say to my very confident insecurities? Nothing. I cried that night. I cried a great deal. And I curled up in the lap of God and sat there, rejoicing in the fact that He still loves me, that He still initiates contact, that He still cares about how I'm doing .. and yet wondering what I had done (or failed to do) within this group to make them all dislike me so much. The mutual friend of ours that got married last May (I blogged about her and her wedding and being a bridesmaid for her and all last year, and you can read those in the archives) still keeps in touch with me and doesn't make even my deepest-set insecurities feel that it's just out of pity or duty or anything else. She is a friend, and a good one, and has always been a good friend for/to me. So if even one person out of the whole group still loves and cares about me, how bad could I have been? And I try to tell myself that I know this group of people well enough to know that they've got a great deal of other things going on in their lives and they're like this with most people. But then, they're not like this with everyone. So, it hurt. But I could feel God's presence so strongly in those hours. So very strongly. Part of me wanted to just go out for a drive in the mountains or to go out to somewhere where I could be out in public, even if alone. Just to feel human life around me. And part of me wanted to call up the friend that I'd had tentative plans to spend time with Saturday night before I knew that there would be a group gathering. (Since this friend was also a friend of others in the group, I just invited her to the gathering, too. But the plan was I'd call on Saturday night to give her and her husband (and their baby) directions.) But I knew that if I went out with anyone, I'd just be thinking about being hurt once again so badly by this very same group of people, and I'd be thinking about how I felt like such a fool for letting them hurt me so much again (you know the saying, something about once is their fault, twice is my fault), and I'd be thinking about everything except having a good time out with a friend. And I didn't want to do that to any friends of mine, nor did I want to do that to myself. So I stayed at home (my roommate was out with some other friends of hers, so I had the house all to myself -- which was actually a very good thing, 'cause if she'd've been there, I wouldn't have "grieved" properly and vented my frustration and whatnot) and I cried. And I wrote a little. And I read some. And I watched a movie, which actually had a few of these issues involved in it so that it was unexpectedly appropriate. And I called on Sunday to find out what had happened (there always is that off and unfortunate chance that there was a terrible accident and *that* is why no one called me, and it's always good to know that the people you care about were not involved in an accident -- or to find out that they were so that you can pray and be there, or perhaps mourn, as needed). Basically, it boiled down to forgetting and not really missing me. Hopefully, I won't be so much of a fool in the future. More than that, though, I hope that my heart does not get yet harder, does not have yet another layer of the wall built up around it. I don't want to lose out on other friendships in the future because some people do not think I'm worthy of friendship. My loss and theirs, but not something that should hurt me so much again.
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
