[I am listening to Give Up, an album by The Postal Service]
Sometimes I can look at a situation and be so engulfed in the emotion of it that I totally lose track of…a lot.
I was sent a link to a friends’ “photo,” site recently and felt kind of bad – sort of unwanted and even alone. I saw pictures of people I know – people I had felt somewhat close to – and they were all without me. I wanted to belong; I wanted the understanding that I was needed as much as I needed them.
What I got was the impression that I didn’t matter.
The disjointedness from people that you have this sort of communal bond with hurts, right? When we see common faces together and think that our bond with them is just as strong as their bond is to each other, but we see them without us on numerous occasions…doesn’t it make us feel like we should reject the relationship altogether? Maybe not you – maybe you’re more mature than I am. Maybe you’re more aloof – more above those things.
I guess I’m not.
I can’t help it; I’m just made that way.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone…”
On the up end, I thought of moving this past weekend. If you don’t know, the short of it is that we were forced to move because our Land People were moving into our apartment [that is the huge brief of it all]. We found a new apartment in two weeks and sent out e-mails for help on extremely short notice. The help that came was absolutely amazing and I couldn’t ever express to those who helped how incredibly thankful I am for them.
My mother and father-in-law came down with a teenager they had hired, we unloaded all the boxes from our apartment to the U-Haul in about 1 ½ hour. As you can imagine, when nine friends showed up to move things up to our new apartment the work was short and sweet.
The point is that I have a tendency to focus on the bad. I become filled with this general sense that I really deserve better. On the one hand, it’s not good for me to be alone. It’s not good for me and my wife to be alone…unless we do what married people do. But the point is that God does provide for our needs, even in friendship.
Why worry so much about the friends who punked us when we have friends who love us?
Why? Because friends are friends. You expect them to be according to perception. When you get punked, it hurts. That’s why.
To those who helped [you know who you are], as strange as it may seem, my thank you will never be enough. I am grateful for your friendship.
9 comments:
i can relate to that. i've often been offended, or got my panties in a twist as some might say, due to similar things. once i remember a friend telling me what they had done the past weekend and how much fun whatever activity they had participated in was, and how great this and that yada yada yada... i was so pissed.
why had i been excluded from the yada yada's. hadn't i invited them to every single thing i had done in the past 6 months? where's the reciprocation?
oh well guess i'm made that way too. doggett once told me that i just feel like i get punked by friends because of the personality type that i am. i prefer to think that they are just mean and i am a better person than them :)
I'm going through the same thing right now. It's more from a musical end, but then alot of my friends are musicians. I am the only one of my friends who plays piano, so you can probably guess that when the guys have jam sessions, I'm usually not invited. It's a lot easier to put your guitar in the case and go than it is to put your keyboard in its case and go. They don't have anything against me (I don't think), I just don't get invited. Yeah, it hurts, but the time I do spend with them (mostly outside of musical stuff) is a blessing. I have to remember that. It also doesn't help that I'm the only one of all my musical friends who DOESN'T listen to Nickel Creek (they're great, they just don't have a piano player).
All this to say...I'm in the boat, too.
I can relate Gene. Alot of the people I hang out with these days are musicians, and they all play guitar but me. I've never been invited to a jam session or rehearsal or to play alongside them in a show. Why? I'm not sure. Could be that they all like folks like Nickel Creek and the guitar-driven stuff (nothing against that stuff at all). Yeah, it hurts sometimes, but they don't neglect to invite me because they don't like me (I don't think), I think it's just alot easier to throw the guitar in your backseat than it is a keyboard. It doesn't change the fact that I want to play, though.
I can totally relate to this. I've been struggling lately with feeling left out of the "musician circle" if you will. Alot of the people I hang out with these days are my friends who are musicians, and it seems like they're always playing gigs together, jamming together, and I'm never there. I've come to realize that there's a common bond between all these people that I don't share: a love for Nickel Creek and newgrass/bluegrass. Now I'm not saying I don't like this style, because I do. Only thing is, there's no room for a piano in this style (could be...), and that's why I'm not as fond of it as everyone else - I play piano. Yeah, it hurts sometimes, but I'm learning to be thankful that they want to hang out with me period.
Put me in the boat, too.
Ok, yeah. Sorry I posted 3 responses. Gene, you can delete these and just post one if you like. I didn't realize it was actually going through.
thank you rick for making that clear for us. i think it took 3 different posts for me to finally see what you were trying to say!
rick,
i am so glad that you wrote 3 different posts. it was finally made clear to me.
rick,
thank you for making that clear in 3 posts finally i understood what you were saying.
No prob, Beck. Sometimes I'm not satisfied until I say things 3 times. You know what they say, "Third time's a charm."
What's your blog address by the way?
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