The First One

It’s been a long time since I have blogged.  And even then it was just me being sarcastic and silly trying to make people laugh as I talked about my first year of college.  I want this one to be something more.  Not for anyone that reads this, but for me.  I don’t have the patience to journal most of the time, but I think it is a useful exercise.  I can type faster than I write, so this might work.  Plus, I don’t want to have to look back on this part of my life and just think about all of the time that I spent looking at people’s pictures on facebook. 

I think in the past 24 hours I have really discovered this serious side of me.  I mean, I knew that it was there, but this just feels different.  Maybe it is maturity.  Maybe it is just all of this talk about New Year’s Resolutions and becoming a ”better person”.  I like to think that I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, but maybe I do.  I wish I didn’t.  They seem way to cheesy for someone who is trying to take themselves seriously.

The feeling started last night when I was reading this book called School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of The New Monasticism.  It is a book all about intentional community and “new ways of life in the abandoned places of society”.  It sounds good to me.  Until I read the first chapter.  And then I got frightened.  Actually, I got scared.  I was afraid that God was really going to hit me with some heavy stuff that I am not ready for.  I want to be able to justify the things that I do and the things that I like to do.  I don’t want the life of Jesus Christ and the things that He said to tell me that I can’t go to Target and buy something just because I want it. 

But sometimes you just have to face the things that you are scared of.  So I kept reading (it’s not really like I was thinking about not reading it.  I just didn’t want to get uncomfortable.)  

The first chapter is all about being alone.  Not just going to a room in your house that is different from the room your husband is in.  Or about sitting by yourself in your apartment while your husband gets coffee with his brother (which I am doing now).   It’s about REALLY getting alone.  Like staying by yourself in the desert or not talking to anyone for 40 days and 40 nights.  To get desperately alone with God.  I am scared of that.  But I want it at the same time.  I was thinking about this a lot last night as I was trying to go to sleep and it was so mind blowing that I had to get out of bed and go into another room in our apartment building to start another one of these blogs just so I could write about it.

I started the blog, but didn’t write about it until today.

If we are alone for long enough, we really can reach our breaking point.  It just made me think of the movie Castaway.  Tom Hanks had to talk to a muddy volleyball just to feel like someone else was there.  The over 90 year old woman that I work for says that is the worst part about being old.  Being lonely.  “I just get so lonely sometimes.”  At least she has her little bird to keep her company.  She says she wouldn’t know what to do if she lost this precious pet.

I want to face this fear of being alone.  I see signs of the fear all the time.  I don’t think it is pleasing to God when I tell him that I need all of these other voices and presences around to make me feel ok. 

I was motivated last night, after I created the blog, but never actually wrote anything, to plan to take a camping trip by myself when it gets warmer.  I don’t want a car with me (so I can’t run away from the “alone”).  I don’t want anyone to come with me.  Just me.  And that Creator of the Universe that is longing to meet with me there.

Yeah, this has been good. Was it too long?  I don’t suppose it matters.