I THINK my idolatry is the desire to feel like I am capable of easily connecting with others.
Sound weird?
But nothing throws me around as much as whether I feel like I am connecting or not with people I’ve just met. Like the people in my uni course I’ve been with since mid-February.
This past few weeks has been pretty bad. I’ve been tired, I’ve been frustratingly busy, I’ve felt like a social loser and I’ve been stretched in new experiences. All the while growing more distant from God. It culminated with porn sessions on four consecutive days, which is a record for me. Or perhaps the real culmination was spending this afternoon trying to make eye contact with a guy who was possibly gay in one of my tutorials. (‘God, don’t you know I’m owed this moment of eye contact after the past couple of weeks’. He obviously didn’t agree.)
Some of this is ridiculous. There are guys reading this who I have talked and chilled with for hours. Even in weeks where I feel like I’m a social loser I still hang out with good friends. Like on Sunday arvo, I texted a mate and he was free, so we went to a few pubs around the city centre. Good times. Tomorrow arvo I’m catching up for coffee with another friend. And I’m thinking, ‘why isn’t this enough?’ ‘What do I really want?’ I feel like I’m being rude to these people in that my desperation is for some undefined connection that doesn’t involve them. I’m sinning in my dissatisfaction. And then I think, ‘oh, but see those people at uni who always hang out with each other. It’s okay to feel wronged because you don’t that to the same degree yet.’ But even at uni I have something. Like today I would have had pleasant, short interactions with 15 people I know who I was sitting near in tutorials or passed in the corridors. And then I think, ‘oh, you shouldn’t try to make things alright by sticking a bandaid of logic when the core issue is sin against God and others’.
So yeah, still being thrown around by this; still battling.
I wish I wasn’t distant from God at times like this. But I guess part of the reason it is a time like this is because I’m distant from God. Need to work on that one.
persevering all the way 