So, I am in this season of preparation for purposeful dating. It wasn’t until the third day of my fast that I realized that the thing that prompted me to take this so seriously wasn’t loneliness. While listening to a sermon by Steven Furtick called Fix Your Focus I realized that what really moved me to make some drastic moves was the fact that I have successfully buried my loneliness by filling all my time up with me. I certainly wasn’t lonely anymore but boy, are people starting to annoy me. I mean when you’re out in public or at work and you’re thinking “I foreal can’t wait to be at home in my pajamas watching something,” it may be a sign that you really like alone time, or it may be a sign that you’re uncomfortable living among other humans. But that is exactly where God does some of His best work, among people. Is my willingness to miss out on connection easier because I am ignoring my need for others; my loneliness?
Our greatest treasures are found in relationships with others, and I’m not even talking about dating relationships; friends, family, strangers. There is a little piece of God hidden in each of us and the only way we get that part is if we seek it out in each other. This is the purpose of loneliness, not to taunt us for being alone or make us feel guilty for choosing work. Loneliness is simply a sign of lack, like hunger, sleepiness or pain. It shows us when we are going without something not only our body, but our being needs. I lack connection to other humans and the strength that the challenges of those relationships afford me. Even if I have taught myself to ignore that warning, the lack doesn’t go away. In fact, I’ve found that it intensifies and all the practice I used to have getting to know new people feels temporarily lost to me.
I think that’s how I landed here. There is this Andy Mineo song called I Don’t Need You that I keep listening to and seventy-five percent of the time I end up crying by the end of the song (sometimes a tear or two, sometimes an ugly cry), but it’s because the sentiment resonates so loudly inside of me:
“I don’t need you no,
Reject me I reject harder,
I don’t need you no,
Act unbothered gimme that Oscar…”
In fact, there is this part of the song where he is trying so hard to convince himself that he is, in fact, an island that he works himself into a frenzy screaming “I don’t need you!” There’s a pause, a breath, then he gently admits not only that he needs others, but how much he needs them. The song ends like this:
“I always said I ain’t need you,
I always thought it was true,
I don’t need nobody,
Dang, maybe I do.”
That truth, that realization it cracks my heart open like a walnut every time. The current lack is not a forecast of future lack or worse, forever lack. But that was my fear, and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. That letting others in is like giving people permission to hurt me. And not in big ways, the big ways for me have been easier to release because they are so easy to see. Those small ways though; the unreturned phone calls, being stood up, the “I can’t make it” texts, the teasing, the pulling and pushing away, the judging, the mistakes. Loving people is hard. But when you are hungry how long can you go without eating? Even if you’re a master faster like Ceasar Chavez or Gandhi eventually you eat or you die. It isn’t different for our souls. How long will you continue to dull your senses, lying to yourself claiming that you don’t need something that you obviously do? How long before you…eat?
Jesus Girl 