Tag Archives: loneliness

And We’ll Understand It Better By and By

28 Monday Mar 2011

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I was listening to “By and By” by Phil Zito’s band on the way home. (But of course, as the jazz nerd that I am, I was listening to a transfer that I made myself from the original 78 with my Crosley USB turntable.)

Almost the entire time the song was playing in my car, I cried. I’ve been fairly emotional for the past few days. I think it’s due largely to the overwhelming support I’ve had from guys I have class with.

In the course of a conversation I had the other night with two awesome friends, I disclosed that there are things I won’t even post here about myself…things that I suspect that if my closest friends knew, they would disown me…or at least keep their distance. In my mind, if I’m a window that my seminary brothers can look through to help minister to people who wrestle with homosexuality (or even those who fully embrace it), then that’s great.

Maybe even if they know me as someone who is lonely from time to time, then that’s a little more risky…but as long as I spread out my expectations of who I want to hang out with, people won’t tire of me and my seemingly endless loneliness. It might even get to the point where someone might offer me a hug, which of course means a lot, but isn’t something I readily ask for.

But when I stop being a window and start being someone who is real flesh-and-blood who crushes on people, finds them attractive…then what? Will people still love me?

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Maybe it’s just me

23 Sunday Jan 2011

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A short, late-night musing.

I suppose a person who has as many friends (and even more acquaintances) as I do, this sort of thing is bound to happen.  I maybe three or four friends right now who I will text and who won’t text back…or they text me, I ask them a question in return, and they won’t text back.

Or something along these lines.

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And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn…

26 Friday Nov 2010

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One of my favorite hymns of all time has part of its root in Psalm 71:17-18:

17O God, from my youth you have taught me,
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
18So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might to another generation,
your power to all those to come.
19Your righteousness, O God,
reaches the high heavens.
You who have done great things,
O God, who is like you?

The hymn is “How Firm a Foundation.” The sixth verse reads:

Even down to old age all my people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn
Like lambs they shall still to my bosom be borne.

Thanksgiving is always an interesting holiday for me.  This year, I graduated to “adult” status at the dinner in Elwood, IN, because the coordinator asked me to pray before the meal started.

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A Psalm 88 kinda day

19 Tuesday Oct 2010

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Psalm 88

I Cry Out Day and Night Before You
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

1O LORD, God of my salvation;
I cry out day and night before you.
2Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.

Psalm 88 has long been one of my two favorite psalms of lament.  The other, a close second, is Psalm 13.

Today’s lament really started in earnest yesterday afternoon.  I was driving away from school and there was a runner with an amazing body standing at the intersection that I didn’t just lust over…I was full-on envious.

Then this morning, I saw two or three guys who I find myself being very intimidated by at chapel.  They seem very articulate and talented and like they’ll be good pastors.  And they’re all really attractive on top of all of that.  And they wear that attractiveness like it doesn’t really matter to them…they could take or leave it.

Oh, to be that bold.  To have the security to hold one’s looks loosely in one’s hand like they seem to…it’s a pretty impossible task.  How many idols have I just rattled off? Probably five or six.

I just feel very alone; I couldn’t really concentrate in Sermon Preparation & Delivery today…I sort of phased in and out on what the sub would say (though he had excellent things to say, and the stuff I did hear seemed very insightful).  If there’s one class I never check out of, it’s Prep and Del.  But I just couldn’t focus.

I unfriended someone on Facebook this morning.  The past few times I’ve gone to his page to see what he’s up to, he and his cute boyfriend are all over the place.  The guy himself looks like a model. I get that life isn’t fair…but like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), I ask, “but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?”

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The Dark of Night

26 Monday Jul 2010

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God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of His love for us, urges us to grow up.  His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason He takes us into a dark night.  He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.  In doing so He is able to take away all these vices and create virtues with us.  Through the dark night, pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength.  No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the Dark Night.

–St. John of the Cross, as quoted in A Beacon in the Darkness

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The Unfortunate Reminder

20 Sunday Jun 2010

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Alert: this is another gut-level post. You’ve been warned.

So, I’m watching New Moon whilst drinking a Vanilla Coke.  And the scene just went by where Bella says something to the effect of, “the pain is the only thing that makes him feel like he was real.”  Edward has, immediately previous to this scene left Forks (where Bella lives) and removed all evidence he was ever there in her life.

Sometimes that’s what I feel like.  I once had a friend…my best friend.  I wasn’t attracted to him, but I loved him.  I would’ve moved half-way across the country for him.  I’d take a bullet for him.

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Don’t Screw This Up

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

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The words of the title still echo in my ears.  I’d been called to my previous pastor’s office over the contents of my December 1st blog post, simply because a couple of people had forwarded the post to him.  These individuals hadn’t understood fully what I meant in my post and were not, according to my pastor, seeking to accuse me of any sin.

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The Trouble With Attention

08 Thursday Apr 2010

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I’m just about as insecure as the next guy. I mean, I hold my own in a discussion, I conduct choirs and orchestras with a minimum of challenges, I speak in front of groups about the Bible with no trouble at all, I can even handle a classroom full of junior high kids for 80 minutes at a time.

But I’ve never gotten past the idea I have about my being physically undesirable.  It’s terribly difficult to put myself in situations to ask out girls (which I’ve done three times in my life, being shot down very recently without even as much as a second hearing).  I just never think any girl alive (or even guy for that matter) would ever want me. I would categorize myself as clumsy and awkward, even though most people would probably label me as confident.

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