When concerned parties like my sweet friend, Rob, ask what is going on with me I usually tell them I'm going through a quarter life crisis. Of course I get the puzzled look considering the fact that I'm just a few weeks away from my 22nd birthday. The conversation usually ends in a joke I pull out my arsenal and everyone forgets I even mentioned it.
I think there have been many emotions I have been packing and unpacking for as long as I can remember. But these past few months have been very, err, for lack of a better word constipating for me emotionally and mentally. I can only run for so long. I’m barely 22 and I'm weary; my soul is tired.
Today I saw a conversation thread on my twitter from two women I greatly admire. They had ended the conversation ages ago but I have this ridiculous habit of checking their individual timelines so I found it (creepy, I know). It was something about us women not having friends from our own gender. “I don't have very many female friends” was the sentence that jumped out to me and I chuckled because I say that. Often. I'm slowly reaching out to other women these days and giving friendships a chance to blossom into something beautiful. But it’s a hard, hard journey. I still have scars and phantom pain from experiences not too far in the past. I was laying on my bed, munching on something, phone in one hand as I quipped, “It’s not always black and white. Some of us have suffered emotional abuse from so called friends”. Of course there are women who think it MTV cool to say that they don't befriend their own gender but my case is different. Surely I can’t be the only one.
The conversation ended with one of them saying that if a woman has had bad friendships with other women say three times then the problem was probably her. And if she had the same problem say three times in three different relationships the problem was also probably her. Then launched a series of tweets about how black and white human relations can actually be when guided by the Holy Spirit. I put my phone away from me for a long time. Looking at it alone was painful. I eventually got talking with a friend of mine about it and she helped me understand a couple of things.
It got me thinking though, how easy it is to group things into two convenient boxes but real life is rarely like that. What happens, for example, when in trying to make better and more God-honoring decisions in my relationships, my partner turns out to be the worship leader who manipulates, emotionally and spiritually abuses his God-loving, church-going girlfriend? Was I not discerning enough to have seen it coming that someone I knew and brought me closer to God would also have me trapped between the wall and thirsty hands? Is there something truly awfully damaged in me that attracts backbiting friends who also led bible study? Am I truly the magnet that attracts the predators and manipulators in the world and even in church? Am I not discerning/spiritual enough to see through their disguise? Or are there just too many people in need of a personal savior in the world? Is it me? Or it the frailty of humanity?
My heart bleeds for each time that we as Christians rashly share things online without thinking (or caring?) how our statements are read. It’s easy to think, “Yes, I'm just speaking the truth” or quip something witty about not wanting to be liked by people but to simply please God. But the question we should really ask ourselves is “Am I pleasing God? Or am I making my faith as unattractive as possible to people?” And no, they don't have to go hand in hand.
There are statements that we can make when we are teaching at church, for example, when we're talking with friends on the same level as us spiritually or having lunch with friends that even though those statements are radical, the people around would get it. They would be convicted by it but not offended because y'all are on the same level. Unfortunately, online, we don't have that luxury. We forget that the same crowd we have church picnics with is not the same crowd surfing the net. No one can see that my eyes are not vindictive as I share that bible verse on my Twitter, no one can hear the softness in my voice as you say it. No one can hear the levelheaded factual explanation that follows. All they will ever see are the words on their computers, phones, tablets. Not words that convict, but words that condemn.
Not everyone who has been burned by people (both in and out of the church) have the luxury of talking it over with girlfriends like Kovie. Each hurried Im-just-stating-the-facts-take-it-or-leave-it update online drives jaded, weary hearts farther and further away from the light into waiting numbness.
How many of us in it actually give as much grace as we have received?
“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” – 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 NIV
