322. tell me about love (part 3)

[PREFACE]

(Part 1 here. Part 2 here.)

This has been one of the hardest posts to write in a really long time.

According to the journaling software I use to write my posts, I started it way back in January 19th. That’s almost a month ago.

It was a hard post for many reasons, but mostly because I think I’m being even more open and vulnerable than I usually am. On top of that, I’m not even sure about what I’m writing about and so being vulnerable about something I’m not sure about doesn’t make for easy writing.

But I’m glad I got it out and I’m glad I’m putting it up.

This has been a tough nut to crack but now that it’s done, I’m hoping to finally get back to posting at least one post per week.

Anyway, this is all just my (lame) excuse as to why it’s taken me so long to put anything up.

[END PREFACE]

So I’ve written before about how since the start of 2006, I’ve been content as a single person.

That was an interesting time in life for me. Prior to 2006, my one aim in life was to try and find someone to love. More specifically, someone to love who would love me back (an important distinction). I used to complain endlessly about being single to the point that my friends would politely suggest that I shut the hell up and just date someone already.

And then 2006 rolled around and all that longing went away all by itself. I mean there wasn’t any sort of grand epiphany that I had or any major life lesson that got me to change the way I felt about finding a girlfriend. Those longing feelings went away so cleanly that I didn’t even notice that they had gone until a few months had passed. I was just driving around one day and somehow noticed that I wasn’t pining for a relationship anymore.

In the months following my realization, there were two things going through my mind. First, I was wondering how long this contentment would last – I thought that I was somehow experiencing some sort of temporary reprieve from desperation and that one day the really bad, really lonely feelings would be back. Second, I wondered if there was any price to pay for this contentment. That is, I wondered if, in losing the longing that had plagued me for so long, I had lost something else at the same time.

Well two years have passed and I can say that I’m still very content with being single so I’m no longer worrying about that first bit. But the second bit? I think I’m beginning to realize that there was indeed a kind of price that I paid for this newfound contentment. And I’m beginning to think that the price may have been far higher than I ever thought it would be.

A little over a month ago I wrote about something that was eating away at me, something deep and hidden and ugly. I didn’t know what this something was so I decided to call it “Bob.” Anyway, I’m beginning to think that, in some way that is still unclear to me, Bob is a part of what it cost for me to have contentment as a single person.

And I realize I’m being obscure and vague, but it’s because the connection isn’t entirely clear to me either.

Let me see if I can write my way out of this.

There were lots of different reasons why I longed for a relationship prior to the liberation of 2006. Among them were these: I’ve always found women fascinating – the way they thought differently about the world, their soft skin, all the different ways they knew to do their hair, etc. I also longed for relationship because I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by a woman. I wanted to be there for someone – someone who would be there for me as well. And of course I wanted to learn what I once called, “the warm, buttery language of touch.”

I had all kinds of different reasons why I wanted to be in a relationship, but I think the main one was always – to learn about how to love and how to be loved. I remember at one point, I got close to having a girlfriend. It’s a pretty long, pretty gory story (if you must know, see post 174) but suffice it to say that before it went bad, it was really good and I still (vaguely) remember how wondrously, vitally alive I felt during that time. And a big reason why I was looking for a relationship back then was to get that giddy, amazing feeling back – that feeling of loving and being loved.

And this is where I think I’ve paid a huge price for my contentment with being single.

See, it’s taken me a long time to realize this but…and this is really hard for me to admit and write here…I wonder if I’ve lost my desire for and ability to love. And I don’t just mean love in the context of romantic relationships. I mean love in all contexts. This is very difficult to write because it’s embarrassing to admit and hard to face but I think I need to go there if I’m to get through. And I know that sounds like hyperbole, like I’m being overly dramatic for the sake of making my blog worth reading but in this case, I mean it just as I’m writing it. I don’t think I give or receive love very well, if at all.

Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve thought and written about this. Back in post 284 I wrote the following, “What if I have no idea what love is? Because . . . I don’t think I know what love is.”

Maybe I’ve lost my ability/desire to love. And maybe that’s because I don’t know what love is.

I don’t know.

But here’s what I think.

I think that Bob is the part of me that still wants to love and be loved.

Because love is at the core of what it is to be human isn’t it? But even if it isn’t, then love is certainly at the core of what it is to be a christian.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12

See, I wonder if after all those years of being an unhappy single person longing for love, I wonder if some subconscious part of me got tired of being lonely and frustrated and so it just kind of amputated that part of me – lopped it off and buried it away somewhere. And maybe it thought that was that. And I didn’t think all that much about it because I was more than happy to be rid of all that old longing.

But maybe it wasn’t just the romantic love part of me that got put away. Maybe love can’t be so neatly dissected. Maybe all (or most) of my ability to know/give/receive love got buried as well.

But love is important, integral even. And if love is a large part of what it is to be whole, then despite the fact that I’m enjoying being single (being free of that old longing for a romantic relationship), something is very wrong in my life.

And that’s what I think Bob is about. Bob may be that submerged longing for and need for love working its way back up to the surface. And love is patient, love is kind and perhaps that’s why Bob only breaks through in moments of stillness and quiet and vulnerability.

So what now?

I don’t know.

But something needs to change because I think this not knowing how to accept, not knowing how to give, not knowing how to ask for love is affecting me in more ways than I’m aware of.

Because (and this is also very hard to admit) there are times when I wonder about God’s love for me. I mean, I know in theory that he loves me but I don’t know how to experience, how to sense, how to feel that love. And turing that around, I’m not sure how to love God.

Maybe it’s the perfect time for me to be attending Mars Hill Graduate School (I just realized that I haven’t blogged about this yet…stay tuned, I will). Maybe working towards a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology will help me work through these issues of love.

I don’t know.

And so tell me about love. Is anything I’m saying making any kind of sense? Am I suffering from mountain-out-of-molehill-itis? Am I still missing the point about Bob?

I don’t know.

317. let me introduce you to Bob

Something strange happened last night.

My church held the first of a two-part seminar titled, “Space to Breathe: Worship and the Arts.” It was one part experience (they made us do stuff) and one part discussion (they made us talk about stuff), both meant to help us explore what worship is or what it can be. Because worship is so much more than a (sappy) musical genre.

I went in not quite knowing what to expect, but excited at the same time because I have lots of questions about worship and I’m always excited about any way to get the arts back into the church. Having both in one seminar sounded almost too good to be true. And while I did learn some great things about worship and art, I also learned something far more profound and important about myself.

But I’ll get to that further down.

Well the night began with a kind of improvised labyrinth. The chairs (we don’t have pews) were arranged in such a way that they created paths that led us to three stations, each of which had a kind of spiritual focus. There was a tidy little handout that led participants through the labyrinth with one page guides that provided hints and suggestions as to what to do at each station. I forgot to bring my handout home with me so I may get this wrong but I believe the three stations were rest, reflect, and respond.

The first station, rest, was the simplest. It was just a little corner of the sanctuary where we were asked to sit and wait and acclimate ourselves to the spiritual nature of what we were embarking on.

And thats when the strangeness began.

I think I knew I was in trouble the moment the darkness and the quiet began to envelop me.

It wasn’t a voice, it wasn’t the awareness of the nearness of the Holy Spirit, it wasn’t anything that felt at all spiritual. That is to say, it wasn’t something outside of me that I felt. Rather, it was something really deep down inside of myself that was making itself known. And when I say “deep down inside,” I don’t mean physically because I’m only 5’5″ so there’s not a lot of deep to go down into. I mean deep down in my spirit/psyche/soul – whatever it is that makes me me and not just a sack of proteins and enzymes.

Now I don’t mean to break the narrative, but it’s going to be difficult to continue writing this if this “something” that I’m referring to isn’t named. And so I’m going to call it Bob. And if you’re wondering why I’m doing this, try reading the rest of this post substituting the words “this something” every time you see the word “Bob,” and you’ll understand.

Bob was down there wanting to push through to the surface and make himself known. I knew this was happening because for some reason, Bob was trying to go through my tear ducts. And maybe that makes sense because if the eyes are windows into a person’s soul then if something from within that soul is trying to make its way back out, well why not through the window?

And I didn’t fight it. I knew this labyrinth thing was a spiritual exercise and I wanted to experience whatever it was that was there for me to experience. I let myself shed a few small tears but somehow I knew that wasn’t going to be enough for Bob.

I spent quite a bit of time at that first station. I knew part of the exercise was to rid ourselves of our need to rush from thing to thing. And I wanted to give Bob a chance to do or say what he wanted. After I felt as if I had given myself and Bob enough time, I moved on to the next station – the reflect station.

This station was set up at the front of the sanctuary. On stage were a bunch of candles – big ones, small ones, lots of those tiny tea light candles. It was quite an array. But I didn’t get all that good of a look at them. At least not at first because Bob started using my tear glands as punching bags. And I let him wail away. I cried that kind of hearty, convulsive cry – the kind that babies cry because they have no other way of expressing what they don’t know how to express. And I didn’t know what I or Bob was trying to express either but it must have been important because it wasn’t going to wait for words.

I told a friend once that unexplained crying episodes were kind of like taking a shit for the soul. Sometimes we stuff things down and do our best to keep it down but then we get all constipated and the soul can only hold so much in before it starts getting ill and so it gives us the teary version of diarrhea. All that nasty shit that we didn’t want to deal with at the time, all that stuff we thought was over and behind us, it all comes spilling out through our eyeballs and our nostrils.

I covered my face and wept into my hands. I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself and disturb the other worshipers and so I wept in silence. And of course I wasn’t expecting this so I didn’t have any tissue on hand. Once I was done with my little crying fit I realized I had two handfuls of tears and snot. I suppose the normal course of action would be to get up, go to the bathroom and wash myself off but although I didn’t understand what I had just been through, I knew enough that I wanted to stay where I was as gross as I was. I wiped a bit of my messy onto my pants and spent a lot of time just looking at the candles on stage.

I switched back and forth between just being there in the moment and trying to analyze what had just happened.

Normally after a crying fit, a kind of peace descends because, to return to my shit analogy, the bowels are empty and clean. But that’s not how I felt. I still felt broken somehow. I knew that Bob wasn’t done with me yet, not by a long shot. And so I waited and tried to analyze and when I realized that though there was still work to be done, that Bob was done for the night, I moved on to the next bit of the labyrinth.

I never really made it to the last station – the response station. I mean, I walked over there but saw that it was set up as a kind of makeshift painting studio – there were paints and brushes and heavy paper and the floor was covered with tarp. But I didn’t feel like painting. I thought about just grabbing a brush and some paint and letting loose on the canvas but I’m no painter. If I had gone that route, most of my time would have been spent thinking and hemming and hawing and not putting anything down. And so I went to the bathroom, cleaned myself up and went back to looking at the candles.

After a while, I and everyone else made it over to yet another part of the sanctuary where we finished up the discussion part of the night. It began with talking about what we had experienced in the labyrinth. A few people shared their thoughts but I kept mine to myself – not because I didn’t want to share but because I had no idea what Bob was trying to do or say to me.

And I still don’t.

But I have a few ideas about what Bob might be trying to get at.

This has been a really strange year for me. Lots of ups and downs (to put things into perspective, losing my job was probably the least of my downs). I think part of what Bob is trying to relay to me is that I’ve spent far, far, far too much time trying to help and fix others and not nearly enough time on myself. Another thing I think Bob is trying to get me to deal with is my spiritual life. I need to work things out with God.

And maybe that last bit about me reconciling with God sounds a bit odd or surprising seeing as I’ve done a bunch of posts about church and Christianity. But that’s theology which may be another way of saying theory. A friend of mine (and fellow Quest blogger) recently put up a post where he talked about how the academic study of theology is often far removed from the actual work that the Bible is telling us to do.

In a similar way, it’s far easier for me to ponder my own thoughts about what’s wrong with the church and Christianity than it is to deal with what’s wrong with me and my own Christianity. Part of the way I’ve been able to get away with this has to do with one of the problems I see with contemporary Christianity. I think far too much of it is focused on individual spiritual development and not enough on the work to be done out in the world. I use that as an excuse to not deal with the junk in my own trunk. It’s a classic case of speck versus plank. I busy myself with specks while ignoring the freaking giant sequoia growing out of my own eye.

Bob probably has a bunch of things he wants to work out with me and now that he’s made himself known, I’m going to try and not ignore him as much. Because he’s not going anywhere. And I probably can’t deal with all of Bob here in my blog but I’ll cover as much as I can. Because writing is the best way I’ve found for me to work through issues and because writing for an audience forces me to be real and cogent and it forces me to flesh out the backstory – the history that gave birth to the issue in the first place – and that helps me as well.

And so, I introduce you to Bob.

Bob says, “hi.”