At the Center of It All

It’s interesting how I can be sitting in a room with almost a thousand people and feel completely alone. Well, not completely—God was there with me in church today, and I could feel His presence, but otherwise, I may as well have been sitting in an empty room for as much as I felt connected with anyone else there.

A disturbing pattern has consistently emerged over my life so far. So consistent—and so disturbing—that I’ve considered hanging a sign around my neck: Warning! Enter friendship with me at your own risk! The people who get closest to me, who mean the most to me, always leave.

I’m not talking about simply drifting into different circles or switching churches, either. I’m talking about moving to another town or another state. I’ve been told it’s a normal thing, especially in churches. There’s a natural ebb and flow to relationships, and people regularly enter and leave our lives.

What’s disturbing to me is that I can look back on my life and list literally dozens of people who moved away after I got to know them really well. People with whom I spent significant amounts of time, to whom I poured out my heart, and with whom I shared my biggest dreams and sometimes my most private fears. People who I felt were my closest friends. Then they left, and the relationship quickly evaporated until all that was left was an occasional phone call or email and an annual Christmas card.

I’m still wrestling with the dichotomy of being content with everything God has given me and being able to ask for more than enough. God should be enough for me—I mean, heck, we even sang about it this morning. But at the same time, he created me with a need for connection with other people. I don’t believe this is just selfish desire on my part, it’s something built into who I am. So what is God trying to teach me? I know He’s not malicious. He wouldn’t bring someone into my life, connect me with that person, use them to heal hurts and fill voids, then rip them away like a bandage stuck to a scab just for the sake of opening the wound again.

But I also don’t think He’s trying to tell me to avoid any deep connections to other people either. He wants me to love others. But how can I love other people when they keep disconnecting themselves from me?

Sometimes I wonder if I work so intensely at building and maintaining deep friendships that I end up pushing people away. I’m not sure. What I do know is that when I work at my relationships, they grow, they deepen, they flourish. When I back off, they die. Sometimes when I sense them dying, I dig in and try to revive them, and just like what happens when I attempt to save a withering plant, my efforts just seem to accelerate the process until I’m left holding a dried out shell of what used to be a beautiful growing thing.

Someone recently commented to me that she can’t remember the last time she spent time socially with anyone just having a good time and laughing. Neither can I. This is one of those days when I feel very isolated, disconnected from everyone. God is here with me, and He should be more than enough. But He’s not, and I’m ashamed to admit it—I’m a Christian, I’m supposed to just bask in His presence and be filled and fulfilled. God is supposed to fill this void I feel in my heart, but He doesn’t. My wife and my family are supposed to fill the void, but they don’t.

Oh, don’t misunderstand me; they all fill up huge holes in me that couldn’t be filled by anything else, and I’m so thankful I have them and they’re in my life. And every day, they fill up more corners than they did the day before. But there’s more in there, and today I’m feeling those black holes draining my spirit, and it hurts.

So God, I’m asking you for more, even though I’m supposed to be content.

Photo Credits: Enter at own risk by diabolikkitsuney, 7/22/07