For the longest time I have been struggling with friendship. I'm not talking about that surface-leveled type of friendship, where news, sports and pointless facts or takes about so-and-so revolve around every facet of conversation. I'm talking about my struggle with an intimate form of friendship; the kind of friendship that reaches right into the core and center of who we are and allows for true relationship to occur through a long-suffering process of human engagements, honest experience, and convivial change.
My struggle has caused me to be in a state of proverbial loneliness. Nothing to the extreme of depression, no, I have God and He is sufficient, but loneliness in the sense of lacking forms of genuine companionship that make up community; the designated community that God experiences within Himself and desires for us to experience. As far as I can remember, I haven't truly experienced what its like to be in such a form of community, but only because I haven't allowed myself to be a part of this style of community. The reasons for this are quite obvious: Self-protection. I'm afraid of getting hurt, and I'm afraid of allowing others into this dark, grim, and disseminated mess that is my heart because I have convinced myself into believing that there is no other human being on this earth as unpleasant and horribly repugnant as I am; as my sin is.
But then it occurred to me:
Maybe you are feeling so alone because you never actually extend an invitation into your own life for others to enter into. You never give anyone the opportunity to love you. You just keep things at a distance and allow for others to let you into their hearts while concurrently locking the door of your own.
A voice spoke:
Open your arms, unlock your heart, and never fear, for God is here.
"Its not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way." (Pg 192, The Shack)
-burton 261E
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