Spirals, Doors, and Feelings

Have you ever noticed that every time you hold a door for someone who is more than four feet away? They always smile, look at you, look down and rush the open door avoiding any awkward human contact. Or when you stop in the car and wave someone across the street: smile, look down, and then run.

I do the same thing when someone holds the door open for me or when I cross the street. I do not want to make them wait. Which, is silly and insulting. I feel insulted when I am holding the door and others rush. Excuse me, but do you really think that my kindness and charm is so petty that I would not be willing to wait? I did offer. At the same time I feel bad that I caused them to rush.

Am I the only one thinks this way? That there is a slow downward spiraling trend towards bad feelings? The door opening recievee, (the walker? Wait… no.) feels bad that someone has taken the time to hold the door and must wait. The person holding the door feels bad for the one who ran. Both feel they did a good deed. The one holding the door knows they held the door. The runner feels they saved the door opener from having to wait longer. But for why?

Why cannot we, or I, graciously except the offer of an open door just as we are? Walking whatever speed we are at. Do we not believe they are gracious enough? They may have offered yet still are burdened? As though their lives are so poor that waiting a few minutes longer would mean a mental breakdown later that evening.

But it is the same thing most anything we are offered. When parched and given water we suffice with one glass when we could have four. When fed we eat a meager portion when we could eat the whole pig.

If you ask me a question for which I have a ten-minute energetic answer, I shorten and deprecate my own answer. I do not have faith in the other person’s patience. I do not want to be a burden. I am afraid that if I talk to much I will not be liked. Living through fear and belittling my own voice I am depriving them from an experience of life, listening. I am depriving both of us the relationship developed from experiencing me more fully. I sink myself into a deeper isolation.

I am not a hero when I do this, and even if I was I am not the Hulk. I am not endless in my patience and long suffering. I am human and need a friend to speak with, share with, to be free to talk for five hours strait with (I have done this when I was little). I will take the risk. If you ask I will answer, and if I wear your patience thin I learned more about you and we are both better off.

So I commend you, when someone opens the door for you do not rush. Walk at the same pace through, smile, and look up. Look them in the eye with all the time it takes you to get to the door. Make it a real connection, and say thank you.

From belief to doubt to love part 1

From belief, to doubt to love part 2

I care deeply about people and want them to feel loved. One of my principle ways of doing this is thoughtful intentional listening and probing questions to help them open up. My goal was always to console past hurts and pains.

I had many experiences pouring time and energy into others in this way. I was always happy and joyous about the opportunity and saw the blessings and the fruit. It was a signature part of who I was and how I loved people. Then I met Eric.

Eric had previously been known to be a very happy go lucky energetic individual. Everyone on campus knew who he was. We had very opposite upbringings. He was raised mostly by a single mother from divorced parents just above poverty. I was raised by two married parents in a middle class home. However, we always respected each others point of view and enjoyed our conversations that stretched our previous beliefs. I was looking forward to my year with him as a roommate.

Unfortunately, the happy bubbly individual I had known went through an identity crisis and began wallowing in all of his childhood daddy and family issues. I was happy to help despite my own identity crisis where I was terrified of who I would become and that our conversations were rarely conducive to my sleep cycle.

He believed that he was a sham on the outside pretending to always happy. Now he was going to live in each moment honestly. He wanted so bad to have some sort of female affection. And many things like that. On several occasions I gave up what turned out to be a whole letter grade in order to spend time listening and sympathizing with him. Worth it.

I was falling into my own pit of depression, but still I made it a point to share in his life. A girl he had been good friends with had written him a letter saying he was sexy. Most of the conversation I do not remember, but this, “You know what she said, she thought I was sexy. Sexy? Me?” He was rather overweight. “She has a boyfriend and yet she has been my friend and encouraged me. She wrote me a note. The only bit of encouragement I have had all semester. No one else has tried to be a part of my life or encourage me or understands what I am going through.”

Of course not. Especially not the guy sitting across from you two hours past his bedtime who was in the middle of spiraling towards thoughts of suicide. Nope no one.

It was at that moment that I realized… People suck. People will suck you dry of all of your energy. Then, in return. They just sit there and do nothing. No growth. No life change. No progress. Just a black hole sucking up all of the attention.

My identity was wrapped up in my ability to help effect a positive change in others. I had always been able to be some sort of a blessings in others lives, regardless of how small. And now someone who I thought was going to be a close friend threw out all of my loving efforts. My care was rejected and the seed of doubt was planted. If they can just throw away all of the care and attention, why bother?

Developing from belief, to doubt, to love

The next several postings describe my journey from love to doubt and back again. I started off principally and without effort believing in people and my ability to love them towards that which is good. Various experiences broke down my faith people and my belief that my life makes a difference.

This has some bearing on an argument that I had been having with my sister and my mother for some weeks now. According to them there is a specific point in time when someone comes to a self-realization. A moment when they become self-aware of who they are. This point marks when they are an adult and able to make wise decisions and frankly, in a place to choose a spouse and significant life choices. My position has been that one is always continuously changing and growing. The moment when you believe you have arrived you have no longer arrived.

However, looking back I do see a distinct change in my beliefs that is a better mark of maturity. I observed and believed that my actions, feelings, beliefs, and entirety of life effects those around me. From something as simple as frowning or smiling in public, to larger items such as telling the truth verses lying. The mark of our life is how we respond to God’s love.

I am still developing towards that. The temptation is to view the mark of my life as how much good change I can effect in others. This is a falsehood for whether or not there is a good effect in someone else the good action I choose is before God.

Busyness

In modern America there is a fascination with being busy. Individuals will take on work, hobbies, sports, church, and try to have relationships all at the same time. Even those who are not over achievers and try to at least appear and sound busy. It is bragging rights to say that you worked fifty hours a week are in school and still have time to iron your clothes.

But what are we as Christians supposed to do in this culture? Where do we put Christ? Is he part of our bragging rights of reading our Scripture every morning as part of a routine? Attending church services and bible studies. Helping with a kids service and still attending other services in an effort to be busy for Jesus seems to be common for the Spiritually dedicated.

Jesus took time to leave the crowds and pray. He listened to the Father and spent alone time with Him often. Not on a schedule or routine but on a basis of relationship.

One side affect of all of this busyness is that we schedule God to just one part of our day. We have a morning prayer time or bible reading. We have church on Sunday and bible study on Tuesday. This is far from the faith of relationship that we claim to profess. It is kind of hard to swallow that we are willing to die for Christ and plan him into specific parts of our lives.

I posit this response. That regardless if we are busy or not that in addition to any sort of scheduled time, for I will not deny the importance of planning time with those who are important to us, that we should also practice a daily listening and attentiveness to the working of the Holy Spirit. We should definitely set aside time with no schedule. A prayer time with no end date such as the evening before you can sleep in or before a day with no plans. But also, that we should slow down or stringent busy faith and just start allowing Jesus to work in every part of our lives. From the calendar to the rush out the door for work.

When we do this then we may begin to fill our time with more important things. For me, the leading that Christ has given me is to write. So I write this past my planned bed time (my new planning on goals I will speak of later) not to be busy but to carefully do what I feel the Spirit calling me to do.

Listening Part 2

I love hanging out with people who are blunt and simply call things out the way they are. I have several close friends that happily inform me, at the moment of observation regardless of whether it fits the current context or not, that, “your balding,” “you swim slow,” “you laugh really loud,” or, “you talk too much.”

Although some may find this offensive, I find this rather comforting. I always know where I stand with them. There is no guess or wondering if I am doing something right or something horribly wrong. Unfortunately this stems more from a lack of desire to listen closely to those who are not so forward.

I have many friends that are rather quite. They will inform you of everything you need to know, they just are not forward, firm, or loud about it. If I am tired, distracted, or not really paying that close of attention I usually always miss what they are communicating. This usually leads to friction, mis understandings and the need for scheduled conversations.

When it comes to listening, I feel that it is my job to listen in the language that the other communications, just as much as it is their job to realize the times when I may need them to spell it out in a bright neon sign instead of quite whispers.

The only issue, is that for those that are more quite or imply, I can also have the opposite tendency to pick up on things that they never intended. The whole picture needs to be in view. How do we learn? Only through experience.

Do you have any insights or stories of listening well to those who are more reserved?

Listening part 2 (this one is boring)

Listening can be very difficult. Not that there is any difficulty in actually hearing things, but in actually understanding. I am sorry to say that today I am rather un imaginative, so I hope that this is not to boring. But I see listening as taking on several parts, and all of these are realizations that I have had in the last few days.

I need to practice listening with my ears, as well as my eyes and body. Not only do I need to engage them with my whole person, posture and eye contact, but I also need to watch what they are communicating non verbally. I might miss something important.

I need to be comfortable with the relationship. If I am worried about losing a friend, or already concerned that the other person doesn’t like me, I start to think up many things that are not even a part of the conversation. Do they really mean what they say? Are they holding something back? Am I good enough?

Along with that, I need to be comfortable enough with myself that if they are wrong about something, that I am willing to let that go as I am listening. When I start to argue with them, in my own head, and defend myself, I stopped listening and starting fighting for what is mine.

I want to be the person who is a servant to others, who is willing to let what he wants go in order to be there for someone else.

It is only just recently that I realized, that in any good relationship there needs to be the security that even if something is wrong, (since we are human there always will be) we are confident in the character of the other person and the relationship itself. Trust truly is the foundation of any good relationship.

Listening

I was reading in a book recently about a peasant mercilessly beating his donkey that was laden with wood. The animal was tired and slowed, so the peasant whipped it. Eventually up a hill the animal gave up and just laid down. The peasant began to past whipping and just beat the poor animal. He was treating it as though it was a machine, not a donkey.

In the context of the story, he talked about how whenever we are dealing with a thing such as an animal or an idea, that we must know what we are dealing with. We need to know its limits, how it communicates, what it is supposed to do. We need to know what it can do, and what it can’t.

I immediately thought of relationships. I realized that recently in one of my friendships, that I wasn’t treating my friend as my friend. I shall call him Sue. I was treating Sue like Sandy, not like Sue. I was treating Sue how I wanted him to be able to behave, not how he was.

Of course, I expect those around me to want to grow and improve, especially if I am going to be close to them. But if I begin to treat say, a house bunny the same as a speedy wild jack rabbit, then I am going to cause nothing but problems.

In short I need to treat people as they are, as an individual who is unique with family background, genetics, a certain body, differing capabilities. To do that, I need to listen very carefully. With my ears, and my eyes. I am committing, and want to, be able to let myself go so I can really step into others. I will talk about listening in my next post.

If I want to be an effective lover, I need to know if I am loving a cat person, or a dog person, or a rabbit, or whale, or duck, or hippo or platypus. I especially need to know about the platypus because they have poisonous claws that can kill you.