Introspection

In the last several weeks, I have become increasingly introspective. I have spent hours and hours alone - reading, writing, sitting at my computer, listening to books on CD, watching movies. And it's mostly been a good thing.

I have been lost in the challenges I am currently facing. Treading water and trying to stay afloat in the midst of things that threaten to overwhelm me most days. Sitting silently, mostly unwilling to share my own struggles. Needing time to come to grips with these things before I share them with others and ask for their support as I walk.

My friends have been busy, and the ones that tend to be our social conveners have been out of town since the end of December, so it has been easy to semi-isolate myself in this time.

I didn't realize how isolated I had become, until Sunday night. I already mentioned in my previous post that I had two fantastic and encouraging conversations. What didn't hit me until this morning was that the reason they were so encouraging was that my soul had been longing for the connection. That it is time to begin emerging from this self-created isolation.

This is not going to be easy. I still feel lost in my own thoughts. I don't want to be a grasping and needy person like some I know - the kind of person with whom you dread having a conversation because you feel their tentacles of need reaching out whenever you're in proximity, and then I cringe, because I know that I have nothing more of myself to pour out. I don't want people to feel like that with me.

I have learned this month to talk with Jesus even more regularly. I still don't hear Him all that well, but I am learning to rest in Him, I think. To hand Him those moments of crisis in my friend's life, to hand Him the pain in my own life.

But now, I am ready once again to be with friends. To have a social life. To participate in fun activities that won't require my every thought to be focused on the things that I am facing.

I am caught by the words from David Crowder Band that I quoted in a post a few months ago:

Come awake, from sleep arise
You were dead, become alive
Wake up, wake up, open your eyes
Climb from your grave into the light.
Bring us back to life.