Today started out as another perfectly normal one. I felt fine, did my usual thing at church, and then this dreaded thing happened: I was asked to go to some friends' house for Sunday lunch. Yes, you may read that and be like, "why is that bad? You're friends...I don't see the bad!" Well, that's what I thought, too. Except I am learning this new thing about myself where I covet my alone time without even realizing it, so certain sporadic, random, spontaneous invites to go places and do things KINDA FREAKS ME OUT.
Okay, I'm not saying all of them are hard. But gosh, sometimes, and of course I have no control over WHEN those times are, I just really DON'T WANT TO BE SOCIAL, OKAY? Is that bad? Does that make me a terrible, selfish human being? AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO GETS LIKE THIS?
The answer to all of those questions is NO. No, it is not bad. No, it does not make me (or you) a terrible, selfish human being. No, I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO GETS LIKE THIS. Friends, it is TOTALLY OKAY to not be okay. Do you know that? Here's the thing I am trying to do more and more, though. I'm trying not to let that desire to be around nobody but myself be the thing that I end up giving into every time. Sometimes, it really really is okay to just take some time for ourselves. Necessary, even. However, there are also those times when I am just making a silly excuse up by saying "Oh, but I have things to do", when really my 'things' are just writing some letters and reading a book that I'm currently addicted to. Those do not give me a "get out of socializing free" card for the day.
I am recognizing the more times I have these feelings that it is actually another form of fear. Fear is something I constantly want my life to be known for in the way that I fought against it. Shoot, I even re-titled this blog after that desire in me to not let that STUPID FEAR win. The blog first started when I decided to leave this country for the wonderful (and seriously hot) country of Honduras. *Feel free to scroll back to my first blogs for more on that adventure* Then when I got back my blog's theme was more of how I viewed life in light of how Honduras changed me...except I'm pretty sure I only managed to make one entry...oops. Then there was this current season. The season of battling fear. My dear buddy Ben Rector (okay maybe he doesn't know he is but WHATEVER, a girl can DREAM, right?) has this beautiful song called...you guessed it (or maybe you didn't) FEAR. He has this line in there that immediately made it my absolute favorite song of his:
I learned to dance with the fear that I'd been running from.
Thank you, Ben, for making fear something okay to have. So often we hear that we have to be fearless. Well, I don't think that actually even exists. I think the only way we can get over fear is to just deal with it. To push through. To keep going in the direction God is calling us, even though it's scary. The only way to do life well isn't to get RID of fear, it's to dance with it. Ben is a smart guy.
I ended up going to my friends' house and hanging with my sweet friends and smiling at cute babies and eating yummy food and, my favorite part, playing with a cute Corgi (yes, I am that person who gets more excited about the dogs at parties than I do about the humans sometimes.). And then guess what...I still got to go home and do some reading and some writing. Turns out there's time for all of it. Then I ended my night with some karaoke jamming with our youth group kids, and DUH, THAT IS NEVER NOT FUN. On my drive home tonight, I noticed the rain had stopped and the sun was shining through the clouds, the clouds that earlier in the day threatened to steal my joy, metaphorically, because I felt a little broken in not wanting to be with people. That's what God does, though, isn't it? He reminds us of His love in something as simple yet beautiful as a cloud.
My last thought before I go, something again simple yet so needed, was this reminder from my friend, Sarah. No matter what trouble we go through here on earth...it's all TEMPORARY. I pray you can rest in that today. And always. We were never meant to bare heartache and pain forever. The only forever we were meant for is when we go Home. Thank You, Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment