The Irony and Comfort of Being Me

Catching up on my favorite blogs this Sunday morning.  Finally found the time to do so after almost 2 months of being an unfaithful subscriber.   Most people might ask why I prefer reading what these people write about than have conversations with people around me?  It's true.  I barely have conversations with people around me.  It's ironic because I'm in need of soulful conversation.  It's an unending question and I often leave this question unanswered.

But perhaps I'll try answering it now.  

I don't spend a lot of time conversing with people around me not because I don't want to but because they don't want to.  Conversations with me would me looking even deeper than what's at the tip of their tongue. Conversations with me would mean feeling things they've discarded or put at the back of their head to be attended to later.  Conversations with me would mean spending hours reveling in the mystery of faith and the soulful delight of watching the rainfall and smelling its droplets on leaves.  Conversations with me would mean an extensive journey and archeological dig of what lies inside that needs cleaning up.  Conversations with me would mean talking about words and thoughts that may not often be in any form of language but just a mere expression of meaning.  

I enjoy resonating with people.  It brings a sense of community and family.  But most of the time, to others, I'm a complex bundle to decipher.  And I can't help it.  Almost all my life I've tried to run away from the fact that I am this bundle of complexity.  That I often talk in big words and feel too deep the depth of things.  And I prefer the company of books and wisdom than the trivialities of jokes that lead to a restless quiet when the party is over.  This uncomfortable crux that is imposed on my personal journey has often been a heavy cross.

It's like my own personal brand.  I always find myself in ironic situations.  Conflicting situations.  Like my MBA diploma won over 2 years of discombobulating my creative self.  Like the closet writer now stuck in a profession that is meant to lead a business unit to unfold it's capability and reach ventures to become, in the future, a publishing house.  How can somebody with a linear mind make sense of these?  It just doesn't happen in your simple "cause and effect".  My life is just not your logical "cause and effect" arranged in perfect chronology.  It seems to be a parallel journey of sorts that keeps shuffling back and forth a past forgotten dream and present manifestation of it.

Following so far?  If not, I understand.  But I will keep writing because I have come to realize that my writing is not first and foremost for anybody else (as many of those who encourage me through the years say).  It's for me.  

I look at where I am now.  My room.  A place I call my sanctuary.  I look at my family.  I look at my community.  I look at my ministry.  I look at my workplace.  Most of these parts of my life are places I can fit in (more or less) but work -- is a different story.  Yet I'm slowly beginning to see that I'm in a place that always makes me feel uncomfortable about myself because God does not want me to rely on surroundings nor on people in being assured that I am who I am.  I am how He has created me to be.  

I have struggled with this truth for 34 years and I still am not able to completely wrap my mind around it.  I fall and doubt every now and then more than the minutes can tick in a clock waiting to tell time.  And today in the middle of all this rain and cloudy thoughts I realize that I'm not able to completely breakthrough because I am incapable of understanding the need to endure suffering.  

It hit me reading a page from Ann Voskamp's blog (I read from a lot more others but her words hit it dead center).

Perhaps our greatest daily temptation is to be impatient -- to refuse to suffer.  Perhaps my greatest daily sin is to refuse to suffer -- to refuse to take up the cross of Christ. Perhaps my greatest daily sin is to refuse to wait on God's ways -- but want my own will done now.  Patience is surrendering to suffering (a lifting up of suffering, if I may add, a realization that the suffering of the present moment has already been borne by a Savior who knows what it feels like and I need not dwell in such anxiety for He has already set me free) -- a willingness to wait -- a carrying of the Cross.

from jeannine tan