A People Problem

I am an introvert with a people problem.

I love people. I love being around them, and I'd rather spend time with people than by myself. This is most certainly a recent issue, since in college I couldn't seem to get away from people. But now that I live mostly on my own, twenty minutes from my friends instead of in the same room, I have a people problem.

That twenty minute drive seems impossibly long. I grew up in a small town where it was a two minute drive to anywhere I wanted to be. And usually I walked. But now, I often get done with school and decide to just hang out in town before making the "impossibly long drive" back home. I realize if I had grown up farther from town, this drive would be worth making multiple times a day. That's not the case.

But lately I've been asking myself a question: Is it really that I love people so much, or is it perhaps that I fear loneliness more?

I certainly do love people, but I have been noticing a frightening tendency: my inability to say no. If someone invites me over, I immediately accept. I get home at ten or ten-thirty, just in time for bed. Then the next morning, I get up and do it all over again.

I have a few close friends in the area, and lately we've been talking about what we run to instead of God. For some of them it's books or movies (entertainment in general). For other people it might be "more destructive" addictions. But me? It's people. The obsession of having someone always there, and if they're not there, then texting, skyping, or calling. And if that fails, music. Always music playing in the background.

What's the big deal? Why am I so unwilling to be alone?

Part of it is my fear of learning to be content in loneliness... that if I ever truly learn to be content in a place of loneliness, God will leave me there. Forever.

Part of it is my raging thoughts about the future, about past failures, about current stresses.

And part of it is that I'm afraid that in the silence God will speak to me in a way that flips my world upside down. That He will show me things that have to change. That He will command me to do something I don't want to do. Or can't do.

After looking at these reasons more closely, I discovered that in fact all of them stem from a fundamental failure to recognize God as good. I fear that God is "out to get me" even though I know Him intimately. I fear that He is going to stretch me to a breaking point. He's going to give me things I can't do, just so that He can watch me fail.

It took a study in Mark 5 to begin to strip this fear away. In this particular passage, Jesus heals a demon possessed man by casting his demons into a herd of pigs. The herd of pigs go squealing into the ocean and drown (much to my chagrin). When looking at this from the perspective of the healed man, he is ready to do anything for Jesus. But the pig herders are enraged. Jesus took their very livelihood. They had nothing. So they sent him away in a rage. And that is exactly what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that Jesus will take something good (like my livelihood or my comfort) and flip it upside down, take it away, and leave me stranded.

But he offered them a new life. A new life that was infinitely better than herding pigs. It would be a new life doing his work, making him known. But they wanted nothing to do with it.

How is it that I view God as good only when things are going exactly like I want them to? Have I not considered that perhaps there is a greater story He is weaving, and that maybe I should give up my idea of goodness in order to play a part in the grander story?

My prayer these last few weeks has been that the Lord would align my heart to His. That I would call things good that He calls good; that I would work for His higher calling, ultimately seeking to become more like Him, the ultimate goodness. My desires as His desires.

Slowly, ever so slowly it's happening.

I now come home earlier, sit in silence a bit more often, and willingly seek His face more than before. Because I want His goodness in my life, even if that means letting go of my ideas of what is "good."