Our church staff went to a leadership conference today. It was fantastic, and full of great speakers and leaders. I had every intention of coming home and blogging my little heart out about a few takeaways from today, but as I opened my laptop I realized that I was not going to blog about the conference. I knew I wasn’t because I knew I had to write about something else first.
My heart is heavy.
I’m not grieving over an injustice in the world. Nor am I convicted spiritually. . .I’m just plain sad. As an extrovert parading around as an introvert, authentic human connection is essential to me. I need it. . .In fact, I crave it. No pretenses, no justification, no ulterior motives. I want to genuinely connect with people, to spend time with them, to get to know them. . .And I don’t do it very well. I make it about me, and not about them.
Today, or this week really, I don’t feel very likable. My brain is drowning in thoughts of not being good enough, being too loud, being too “much”, too annoying, too whatever. And if I’m not very likable, why would anyone want to connect with me? I’d like to think that everyone feels that way at some point, but I’m not everybody. . .I’m just me.
A me that is sad, and hurting, for no real reason other than I miss people. That sounds weird considering I was in a room full of people literally all day today. But, I think — in general — people are afraid of community. Of genuine community. Being in community means being vulnerable, and real, and that’s scary because people could hurt us and make fun of us and talk about us.
I think we all crave that, to a degree. We crave relationships that are authentic and passionate because we love people that love us and are excited about our existence on this planet.
Loving people just because they are.
The Messy Faithful 