pray naked

This week has sucked a lot out of me. I was in Burlington, NC from Thursday to Sunday for work and didn't get home until after midnight Sunday night/Monday morning. I tried to sleep in some Monday but had some catching up to do at the office not to mention preparation for our awards banquet Tuesday. Tuesday was filled with meetings and high stress and ended the evening just feeling disconnected from the people in my life.

I don't always understand myself... rarely I understand myself. I can be wishy washy and opinionated... I can be judgmental and too forgiving... I can be desperate for time alone and still be desperate for time with friends. I can't predict it.. I can't time it.. it's me.. maybe it's part of being a girl but I don't even want to excuse it so easily.

I went to sleep in my house by myself craving fellowship and woke up to an e-mail from my mom with the subject "upsetting news." That can't be good. My mom can be funny but e-mail subjects aren't usually her avenue of humor. It turns out my cousin, my dad's niece committed suicide Tuesday. She has to be close to 40 with a husband and kids. The last time I saw her was probably at a funeral three years ago. The last time I spent any considerable time with her was at our grandmother's funeral six years ago. I don't know a whole lot about her. That doesn't make it easier. There's something about family that makes it possible to miss them even if you barely knew them. I can't explain it. Maybe it's the unexpectectancy... just leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Meanwhile I feel like death causes people to run to others for support. I just wanted to sit and cry yesterday and yet I had to go to work and pretend like everything's ok. Students are finishing classes and stressing about exams and I'm fumbling through silly work in my office. I've just been feeling this need for people... to be able to sit and talk in my pajamas all day talking and watching movies or sit in a restaurant until it closes and they kick us out. But life keeps going and I can't seem to keep up.

Some smart people said... " We don't normally think of attachment as an emotion, but our attachment for people and objects generates a great deal of emotion. For example, our attachment to people or objects creates a wider range of areas for trespass and therefore, anger. It is the loss of important attachments which bring on sadness. It is the attachment to people who upset us and the attachment to our righteousness which leads to hate. Some sages [e.g., Buddha and Jesus] have suggested that we should have no attachments, going so far as to give up family and friends to seek serenity."

As a Christian I feel like God would want me to be completely reliant on Him and not need others. I was reading a sermon from John Beddingfield called "pray naked" where he talked about in Mark 6 Jesus told the disciples to travel light and if people weren't going for what they had to say to "shake the dust off your feet when you leave." I'm not a very good dust shaker. I take rejection and criticism and I load them all up and try to walk around with them. Beddingfield said "When God calls, often he peels away the layers that weigh us down. In the calling of the prophets, in the calling of the disciples, in the calling of the faithful in every age, it often seems like God strips away in order to make us free." I'm aiming for free.