Love & Fear

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear..."

FEAR-(n) feer', Greek: phobos, fob'os: fear, dread, terror

love-(n) luv', Greek: agape, ag-ah'-pay: love, brotherly love, affection, beloved

perfect-(adj) pur'-fekt, Greek: teleios, tel'-i-os: complete; arrival of and yet still a journey of completeness (1john2 Guard This, Mars Hill Bible Church podcast)

to CAST-(v) kast', Greek: ballo, bal'-lo: to throw or let go of a thing without caring where it falls

We are not to be terrorred into belief, following or love of providence and all its creation.

We are not forced to love for fear of perishing.

Providential love to be received is not a burden. Is not pushed. Is not manipulated or manipulative. It is patient, taking however long one needs to trust in it. It is not easily found, lest one rests. Allows time for peace and aloneness, and silently deletes all shoulds, coulds, and ought-to's from the memory.

This love is where all searching stops, satiated or not, but feels at home.

Community

"Life happens when we rub elbows. We gain a better sense of who we are when we're in community. I may be a patient person in here, during a session. But ask my daughter. My wife. They can tell you the truth."

I'm beginning to see some of the causes for my internal life breaking down last year. I was isolated. But I felt safe.

There is a lot of safety in aloneness. No new chances of rejection from a friend or a coworker or a student I mentored. No new chances to experience abandonment. No pain if someone dies or moves out of town.

I was safe. Honestly, I liked that safety. But I think I'm beginning to see how total isolation is possibly just as painful as a friend leaving or betraying me. A different kind of pain, yes, but I think (still unsure) if I have to experience the hell of pain either way, might as well have some friends alongside me.

All last year it took baby steps to get connected into any kind of community (church, the family I was living with, neighbors, gym-mates). But those baby steps were so shaky, unresolved, and filled with fear. Unfortunately, I'm not overexaggerating. I say this because some of you knew me before Texas, and would genuinely have a hard time believing this.

And when I did get connected into community, I Heismann blocked each individual out of my life. Each person had an insurmountable flaw (she smacks her gum, he wears ugly shoes, she's too religious, etc). It took me almost a full year to let some of these people in my life.

But then I left. Everyone in the group was too...tall. Or maybe they were boring. Who knows.

I had all these notions of what community should look like, not all women, some men, all within five years of my age, not married so I could hang out with them on weekends, IQ above average so I could discuss the implications of neuroscience and metaphysics. The list went on.

And on.

....And on.

Until I realized I began to shut everyone out again. Safety. Control. Pain-less (not really, but the grass is always greener). And then my therapist told me his thoughts on community. Rubbing elbows. Doing life, so people could see the real me. So I could see the real me.

He didn't lie to me, it's hard.

And I dropped all my standards.

My notions.

My rules of community.

And I'm still taking it a baby step at a time. Just in the past couple of days I've done some pretty big things to let a couple of my friends see more of me. It's tough. But if both isolation community offer opportunities to be hurt, I'm beginning to believe thriving and surviving is better with others.

God is Great, Beer is Good, and People are Crazy

There are some days I'm sure I could live without people, especially a coworker or two at my new job.

I used to believe that life was about bigger and better. The bigger I lived, the more I did, the better person I was. And the faster I lived it, the more efficient I was at it. And therefore, better. Than everyone else. I was pretty sure I would win a lot of gold star stickers in heaven for that. Like a bazillion of them.

And those 9-5'ers were missing out. They didn't know real life. Or culture. Or adventure. Or what risk was.

After five weeks working at a pretty sweet specialty running store, I've realized that the "normal" life is actually harder than I thought. Taking care of myself...a much bigger task than I originally thought. And if I take the chance to observe, a hidden adventure that no one told me about.

No longer do I believe God looks down on those cubicle clones that tap tap at their keyboards doing what I perceived to be meaningless work.

Because, whether I like it or not, I'm kind of one of them (minus the cubicle, instead, the "circle"). And it's hard.

But if I didn't work with other humans, it would be a lot easier.

Because let's face it. People are messy. Which makes any kind of relationship messy. Which makes working with humans one hot mess.

All of this to say, there are different journeys. Notice Odysseus and his men. Moses and the Hebrews. The single mom raising her child in the best way she can. The American family with 2.5 kids and a picket fence. Haitians living in a village of tarp houses, where, yes, it takes a village to raise a child. The Central Europeans making life work in a worn and torn post-communist society.

Forgive me for thinking you are less because your journey is different than mine. Not one is equal, but we are all travelers, and regardless of the mess, may we aid one another as we cross paths...