I want to belong.
I suppose that's integral to experiencing my humanity. I want a place to feel at home, safe. I guess my heart is one that's never been satisfied if that feeling of at-homeness is only experienced when I'm alone. I want to feel at home, safe with other people. I want to belong with other people.
And you know, if I'm going to be completely honest here, that is the most recurring struggle of my life. My biggest fear is that I will always be alone, and not even physically alone, but emotionally, spiritually. I'm deeply terrified that my destiny for life is to be stuck in a state of perpetual non-belonging.
I've experienced some broken relationships lately. To cry my own sob story...it's felt especially sad because it's all stemmed from disagreements within a church. The rose-colored glasses I occasionally choose to view this life through would like to believe that church relationships are the most protected and stable of all. The current reality, however, has me sobered on the thought. As a friend helped me understand, I feel as though I'm just coming out of a really serious relationship, and I presently have no desire nor intention of getting into another one. I'm in the "protect your heart" stage of the break-up, where I don't want to let anyone in. And that, for me, is an incredibly strange and foreign thing to feel towards church. It's always been such a huge part of my life. I believe in the church, with its flaws and imperfections. I believe that Jesus loves the Church, so much so He would even call it His Bride. But right now, I don't want to trust it with myself. I want to be there; that is unchanged. But while there, I experience this overwhelming sense of mistrust and detachment.
Tonight at a church I've only recently started attending on a regular basis, the pastor announced his wife had the baby this morning (why he was preaching the evening of his wife delivering a baby, I do not know). Without my will in any way directing it, a HUGE smile came onto my face. I hardly know this man; I'm not even certain of his first name. But I felt a genuine surge of joy for him as he and his family of three other ladies celebrate the arrival of Joey, Pastor's first son.
Tonight at church I felt edified as I spoke the familiar words of confession, a practice not common at most of the non-traditional churches I've chosen to attend the past few years. Jesus saves us from so much, even myself. It's good for my soul to speak that truth.
Tonight at church I was reminded of the beauty and depth of the words of those hymns. "Death and grave must soon release us." It's only seven words! But there's so much in that short sentence. I can't unpack it and do it justice; I can't add words to that and make it worth more. Death doesn't own me. Joy.
Tonight at church, as confession ended, I looked up to see an elderly man struggling to pull himself up from the kneeling position. Many a time I've heard criticisms, and have maybe even been party to such criticisms myself, of the lack of genuine and active faith in more traditional churches such as the one I attended tonight. To see this man humbling himself in that way, to consciously acknowledge his depth of need, I was left empty of criticism and full of encouragement.
Tonight at church, I felt that joy and contentment where tears are pressing hard against your ducts, ready and willing to spill out to announce their pure flow to all who care to see. But tonight it was enough to feel that just for me; there was no need to share it with another (I write here only to be accountable to record the moments I do feel inspired in such a way, for I know it will be brief). Tonight belonging didn't mean being emotionally and spiritually affirmed. Tonight belonging was seeing God's goodness to those I don't even know. Belonging was being touched by His goodness amidst strangers who hardly know me. Tonight, belonging was receiving the Groom's unshakable love as the Bride.
