Re-engaging

Psalm 42:7 states that "Deep calls to deep." What is striking me lately is how important relationships are in life. I think even before I left for Africa, God was showing me walls I had built to keep out deep and meaningful relationships. That is not to say I don't have loving friends and family. I just have learned that shallow relationships are more convenient and usually less painful then the time consuming task of getting to know someone. This is the nature of DC as well. We casually ask, "how are you?" But are too busy to listen to a real answer or to be there for someone if they really need support. We feel we have caught up with acquaintances if we go on facebook and read their profile status. Texting has replaced conversations on the telephone which has replaced visiting friends and family in person.


This summer, I unabashedly, unconditionally loved the babies at Cradle of Love. Every night was a bonding night as we didn't have technology to distract us, sometimes didn't have electricity, and so we shared stories of our lives and built community. God brought down my walls and poured through me His love onto my new friends and the babies. I was fulfilled, joyful, content by His love and in pouring love into the lives around me. Coming back has been a rude awakening. While I was peacefully ignorant or maybe resignedly satisfied before I left for Africa, I am painfully aware of the hollowness of my relationships now and I feel lonely. Initially coming back from Africa, I withdrew from friends and family because I was overwhelmed with emotions I couldn't explain. But now begins the hard process of re-engaging in relationships. And I am realizing, I am not going to be satisfied with surface level relationships anymore. I am also realizing how much harder it is to engage in relationships here with all the "noise" getting in the way.

I came across this passage in another blog:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness...We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this. (C.S. Lewis-The Four Loves)

Loving others in Africa was easy, loving others here in America, I don't know how to do. Help me Lord, to love like You, sacrificially. To engage others in deep relationships with me and with You.