Introspection: I Kissed Hopelessness Goodbye

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

I Kissed Hopelessness Goodbye

Scripture:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He's the one who will keep you on track.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (The Message)

What sad memory of yesterday
What terrible scar
Keeps you gathering the pieces of
Your shattered heart?
There was once upon a time
When hope was living within
I know there will come a time
When you can believe again

From "Like I Love You" by Amy Grant

In the past few months, God has led me out of a bad situation, through a time of uncertainty, and into something better. The thing in my life for which I was tearing myself apart inside is now gone. The weight on my heart and on my conscience has been lifted. Without this problem consuming my thoughts, I feel as though I am back among the living, and I am able to focus on other things.

In the past I had a tendency to keep to myself, but in the past few weeks I have found myself desiring to be around people. Lately, I have been spending a lot of my "alone time" in places where there are people. For example, it is not uncommon for me to go to the bookstore or some other place late at night. In fact, at the time I finished writing this, I was eating lunch downtown, using the free WI-FI. I think that the reason for this is partially having the aforementioned weight lifted from my heart as well as another factor in my life: my loneliness.

One day after work last week, I went to many of the different places I frequent until I found myself, once again, at the shopping mall, where I oddly seem to have a lot of epiphanies. As I walked though the mall I found myself preoccupied with one aspect of my loneliness that has troubled me a great deal in the past.

Once upon a time, I aspired to fall in love and to get married. Having had my heart handed back to me a few times in the past, I had become jaded. In the past few years, I have been trying to come to terms with the possibility that I may be facing a life without a mate.

I have noticed that there is a tendency in this world for a person to put too much importance on his or her own marital or relationship status when it is really not the most important thing in life. Though I often fall into this trap, I know that I can live a meaningful, fulfilling life without a woman. St. Paul once noted that marriage can divide one's attention between serving God and serving one's spouse. ¹ People who are unmarried are freed up to devote their lives to doing great things for God. ² Perhaps a wife or a girlfriend was not something God wanted for my life.

Reminding myself of the benefits of being single had brought me some comfort, but the desire for companionship remained.

As I walked through the mall and perused the stores, I contemplated my problem. What went wrong? Was I still brooding over the wounds that I received back in high school? Did I give up on love after my first broken heart? Is the problem, perhaps, much deeper than that? In my insecurity, did I give up on love before I even began seeking it out? ³

I went the tea store where I ordered my new favorite drink, a green tea frappe. I took my drink back to the food court and sat down. Shortly afterward, a young woman sat down at the table in front of me with a bag from Chick-fil-A and began eating dinner alone. As I watched her eat, I began to wonder if she felt the same way I did. Was she too at the mall because she was feeling lonely, desiring to be around other people?

I wanted to speak to her, but I am terrible in these situations. In my insecurity, I often feel as though I need to put on some sort of act around women. I feel like I have to act cool when, in reality, I'm not. As a result, I come across as fake, weird, or even creepy. I knew that if I were to approach her, I had to be myself, completely open and vulnerable, but I did not know what to say. I was tongue-tied. I was at the point of asking God to give me something to say to her.

The problem with frozen drinks is that when they run low they are hard to drink through a straw because the ice sticks together. One remedy of this problem is to shake the drink. Unfortunately, when I shook my frappe, there was still some green tea at the top of the straw which flung out onto the sleeve of my jacket and onto the table. As I tried to clean up my mess with my bare fingers, inspiration stuck. I walked up to the woman in front of me and said...

"Do you have a napkin I can borrow?"

I had broken the ice! She gladly gave me a napkin, and, thankful, I went back to my table to finish cleaning up the mess. Nothing else was said between the young woman and myself. She finished her dinner and left the food court, and I too decided it was time to head home.

I believe that this incident was an immediate answer to prayer. God had given me a way to break the ice when I was unable to find the words to do so. By not continuing the conversation, perhaps I passed up the chance to make a new friend or even to meet my soul mate. Maybe it was not meant to be. I do not understand what God's intentions were, but, if nothing else, I feel as though God was saying to me, "I am with you in this too." I laughed as I walked back to my car. I knew that God was my Creator, my Redeemer, and my Sustainer, but my dating coach?

God cares about all parts of my life, even those I so bitterly trivialize. Perhaps it is time for me to reclaim the hope that I will someday fall in love and be loved in return. I realize that I need to work on certain things for this to happen, though. I need to let go of the bitterness of heartaches in the past. I have to take off the mask and burn down the facade, opening myself to others so that they can see the real me. Most of all, I need to rely on God to strengthen me to do the things I cannot do on my own.


Notes:
1 - 1 Corinthians 7:32-35
2 - Dave Rhodes, "Interrogative: Is it Lawful for a Man to Divorce His Wife?", Wayfarer/Engage
3 - I hate using the word love in this context. In our culture, we tend to lump a lot of different things under the word love, unlike the Greeks who have language to categorize these things (philo, eros, agape, etc.). While I have not known the love of a wife or a girlfriend, when it comes to fraternal love, familial love, and God's love, I consider myself blessed.