This is by far the hardest blog post I’ve attempted to write. I’m realizing I am an emotionally needy person. Now it’s one thing to write anonymously and admit your struggles…its another thing entirely when your struggling and you KNOW there are people who read your blog who know where you live.
God has put the spot light on an area of my life that has got me stumped. Now why in the world would I tell the whole world about this? Cause I believe Christians do the rest of mankind a disservice when we portray that we’ve got it all together all the time.
I wrote some of you and told you I was taking the blog off line for a spell in order to sort some things out….all morning at work, I kept coming back to the thought…no….bring your struggles into the light….so there you have it… I struggle with loneliness more than I care to admit….my marriage does rock…and still there is this gaping hole in my heart that I have a tendency to try and fill by interacting with people. It makes me sick….It is the sort of thing that I suspect causes people to make all sort of bad choices.
I’m not going to find a cute picture to include with this post. DM
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Update 5/1/08
I’m not going to delete this post, although there is a little part of me that is tempted to. Instead, I’d like to add the introduction to the book of Psalms I read this morning in The Message a contemporary version of the scriptures.:
Most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have learned to pray by praying the Psalms. The Hebrews, with several centuries of a head start on us in matters of prayer and worship, provided us with this prayer book that gives us a language adequate for responding to the God who speaks to us.
The stimulus to paraphrase the Psalms into a contemporary idiom comes from my lifetime of work as a pastor. As a pastor, I was charged with among other things, teaching people to pray, helping them to give voice to the entire experience of being human, and to do it both honestly and thoroughly. I found that it was not as easy as I expected. Getting started is easy enough. The impulse to pray is deep within us, at the very center of our created being, and so practically anything will do to get us started; “Help” and “Thanks” are our basic prayers, But honestly and thoroughness don’t come quite as spontaneously.
Faced with the prospect of conversation with a holy God who speaks worlds into being, it is not surprising that we have trouble. We feel awkward and out of place: “I’m not good enough for this. I’ll wait until I clean up my act and prove that I am a decent person.” Or we excuse ourselves on the grounds that our vocabulary is inadequate. “Give me a few months- or years- to practice prayers that are polished enough for such a sacred meeting. Then I won’t feel so stuttery and ill at ease.”
My ususal response when presented with these difficulties is to put the Psalms in a person’s hand and say, “Go home and pray these. You’ve got the wrong idea about prayer; the praying you find in these Psalms will dispel the wrong ideas and introduce you to the real thing.” A common response of those who do what I ask is surprise- they don’t expect this kind of thing in the Bible. And then I express surprise at their surprise : “Did you think these would be the prayers of nice people? Did you think the psalmist’s language would be polished and polite?
Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are at their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an “insider” language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true and personal in response to God. It is the means by which we get everything in our lives out in the open before God….
The Psalms in Hebrew are earthy and rough. They are not genteel. They are not prayers of nice people, couched in cultured language….
And so in my pastoral work of teaching people to pray, I started paraphrasing the Psalms into the rhythms and idioms of contemporary English. I wanted to provide men and women access to the immense range and the terrific energies of prayer in the kind of language that is most immediate to them….
I’m convinced that only as we develop raw honesty and detailed thoroughness in our praying do we become whole, truly human in Jesus Christ who also prayed the Psalms.”
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So what you’re reading if you happen across this post today is me (DM) wrestling with the raw stuff of my life….my personal Psalm if you will… I’m at a different place than when I penned that stuff yesterday….but that’s OK…never said I “had it all together” all the time. Thanks for your comments.
April 30, 2008 at 1:39 pm |
We are social creatures. No one makes it on their own, and if they tell you they do, they’re lying
April 30, 2008 at 1:52 pm |
I have been told by some of my friends that they admire me for posting personal struggles on my blog. On the other hand, my mother has privately emailed me about specific posts asking me if I’m depressed. So, I can completely understand where you’re coming from. I want people to see that all people, even Christians, struggle day-to-day. We all have weaknesses and we all are broken. That’s what I try to show on my blog. I don’t always tell everything that is going on, but I’ll hem-haw around the topic to a point occasionally. All this is to say…don’t be ashamed. Be who you are and hopefully someone will find strength in your weakness.
April 30, 2008 at 1:52 pm |
Well I don’t know exactly what it is that you’re struggling with, but I will pray for you. I think that we are all needy people. The Lord created us for fellowship, not just with Him, but with others as well. (He created Eve for Adam because He said it was not good for man to be alone.) So long as our interactions are not based on sinful desires, and actions that would hurt our spouses, we should not be ashamed. Now, as I said, I don’t know what you’re struggling with, but feeling lonely, and wishing your wife were home with you, is not a bad thing. I will be thinking of you, and praying for you, my friend.
April 30, 2008 at 1:57 pm |
I have a quote posted on my wall… I read it in a book, years ago, and don’t remember who it’s by. But your post made me think of it; “We crave love and affection not because we are weak and needy, but because we know, innately, what is important; we were made to love and be loved.”
April 30, 2008 at 3:58 pm |
You are not needy in the “what’s the matter with you, suck it up, you’re embarrassing” sort of way. You are simply in need. Loneliness is a “relational hunger pang.” Absolutely normal. Since I don’t know your journey, Doug, perhaps you have another iceberg of self-protection breaking off and floating away so that you can feel your need for close relationships that has been there underneath the frozenness all the time. It doesn’t feel good right now, but it is actually a healthy development. As the book “Safe People” by Cloud/Townsend says,”If you’re lonely, get some people.” Easier said than done, but that is the answer, not a bottle of Jack Daniels or 5 Pepperidge Farms chocolate cakes!
April 30, 2008 at 4:12 pm |
Love.
On Christian Love:
“Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term”
“For to love God is to love onself in truth; to help another human being to love God is to love another man; to be helped by another human being to love God is to be loved”
From the essay “Love is the Fulfilling of the Law” in book by Soren Kierkegaard titled “Works of Love”
April 30, 2008 at 5:05 pm |
Can I just tell you … YOU ROCK! I know that’s not entirely the thing you’d like to hear at this moment in time … you’re probably expecting some sentimental, clever anecdote, but the thing is, YOU ROCK, because you are letting yourself out there … you’re not only being honest with yourself, but honest with the world … I think as ‘Christians’, and I use that term loosely, we THINK that we should have it all together, because the world tells us that we should … but deep down, and in ‘reality’, we are just like the drug addict, looking for their next fix, the lonely soul, who just wishes to be anywhere but in the place they’re at, and the uncertain recluse, just wishing for answers … WE ALL struggle, we ALL I believe are ‘emotionally needy’ because we just want that connection … and thank God for Jesus, because I don’t think as ‘Christian’ men and women, we could get through the days without Him. Our ‘fix’ comes from the power and love that Jesus so evidently has for us … I think we can crave for something tangible, so badly, that our emotions overcome us, and we look at ourselves as inadequate and a little ‘needy’ … sometimes it’s just nice to know that someone is there … faith is a little tough in those moments because what we can’t see, is not what we need … we need that gentle touch from someone who cares … anyway, I just went off on a tangent there, but I just want you to know, you’re not alone … and amazingly, the great thing about being at this place of self-discovery, is that God still loves you, right where you’re at! I know this might sound cliché at this moment, but I will be praying for you … life has crazy ups and downs, and sometimes, prayer is the only thing that can make it better … Be Blessed today and in the days ahead … I’m glad you’ll be keeping your blog too! God Bless, ~Emily
April 30, 2008 at 9:05 pm |
Go back to Genesis. God saw man’s need even before the fall and it was not sinful. It was not good for man to be alone so he made woman. Be in the word brother:)
April 30, 2008 at 10:08 pm |
Naming it and claiming it is the first steps to conquering it. Writing it, exposing it to others is the second.
Understand that you have needs. Does that make you needy? Well maybe. Does that make you human? Definately.
You are getting there… one step at a time…
May 1, 2008 at 3:16 am |
It is hard to bare it all when you know some of the folks who read see you walking around town. I don’t really have that so it makes it much easier for me to speak freely.
However, I do think a lot of people experience similar feelings and emotions and once someone else talks about it you hear a lot of “me too, me too.”
May 1, 2008 at 6:26 am |
I admire your bravery in being so open and honest and then meeting people in real life or around town. I know that must take a lot of strength and courage.
I think God intends us to be emotionally needing persons. I have lived a life of being closed off emotionally, and I can say from experience, thta God does not intend us to live that way.
I’m glad you are keeping your blog up.
May 1, 2008 at 6:56 am |
Right there with you. People suck. I want more of them.
May 1, 2008 at 12:59 pm |
You mentioned having a tendency to try and “fill” by interacting with people. Well, is it working for you? If not then stop. We were made to contain God. Recently God has been detoxing me of needing/wanting certain people (church family) to fill me love tank. Blog friends won’t fill it either, but God does, He just does! When stop trying to fill and let Him in he does! L-L-2-F!!!!
May 1, 2008 at 1:06 pm |
A good word for what you are describing is “counterfeits”. You can fuel your neediness by continuing to try and fill it the same way each time.
Just thought that would help.
May 1, 2008 at 9:34 pm |
Can I ask a couple of questions?
Do you have a close friend who is male and outside of the blog world?
Do you meet regularly with a group of men who can hear and support you?
When you were growing up, did your parents teach you how to feel? Did they comfort you when bad things happened?
I can relate to the emotional empty thing. I got the idea this week to write a book called; The Engineers Guide to Emotions. The only problem is that I don’t feel like writing it. Insert laugh here.
I think that one of the greatest things about men is that we can stuff emotions and do things like go to war or have fights at work and come back and do it all again the next day without holding grudges. This also can be our greatest weakness in that we can’t relate to women that well and we tend to tell our boys to grow up and act like men when they need to learn that tenderness is a virtue.
So the question is; how do emotionless men find out how to feel?
May 2, 2008 at 12:07 am |
I don’t think it’s only Christians I think everyone tries to portray that they are ϋber strong in order to protect ourselves which often leads us to think that that we are alone in our thinking, what we feel or what we go through.
I have spoken to many people about the fact that opening up, sharing our darkest fears, our pasts or our problems in turn opens them up to it as well, they have been surprised at the feedback and have slowly realised that they are not as alone as they originally thought they were.
Never stop sharing, not only is it good for your soul it is good for those who read it, perhaps there is someone that really needs to hear those words, someone who needs to know that they are not alone. Your blog and your words can have a powerful impact on another without you even realising it. Keep it up my friend, I know what it takes to share, can be scary as hell!
Never stop!
May 2, 2008 at 3:11 am |
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Thank you each for your words…thank you thank you…Christian Ranter asked some great questions so I’m going to answer some of them here..do I have a close Christian male friend outside the blog world?….I do. We meet weekly-in fact I have 2 guys I call when I sense I need some accountability…As far as growing up/teaching me how to feel… naw, I have a great mom and dad but it wasn’t until after I was out of the house (married) and mom came down w/ cancer we as a family began to express affection or began to say “I love you” to each other that I can remember. The funny thing is, here I am in the construction field- I’ve work around “construction guys” all my life and since I’m somewhat transparent, over the years I’ve had lots of one on one in depth/personal conversations with guys you would never dream had “tender feelings” which gives me the freedom as a man to be as transparent as I am…see people- I KNOW lots of big burly types still have that “little boy” living inside. I just happen to let mine out on occassion
May 2, 2008 at 7:32 am |
Not that I’m any expert (because I’m not), but I was always told that praying is just talking to God, and that it’s OK to tell God how you feel, however that is. I can remember once in college when I was praying for our little hall group, and I thanked God that He loved us even when we screwed up (yes, I used those words). The gasps were audible, but I think God knew what I meant.
My parents aren’t experts on this stuff either, but I think they got that message to us kids – at least, the ones of us that listened – pretty well, on the praying side and the communicating side.
It’s not a bad thing to practice with people, but I have to say: you gotta pick your people. I go to a really good church, but even there, I’ve noticed some walls and fences that get in the way of communication. Some people are OK with it and others aren’t, and it’s hard sometimes to recognize that, to be patient, and to just love them where they are.
You’re just further along that path, DM, and that’s OK – the more guys who let their inner 9-year-old out once in a while, the better the world will be, IMO.
May 2, 2008 at 6:06 pm |
[...] has been wondering about her job in life, DMhas been running thru a [...]
June 14, 2008 at 3:32 am |
Waaw, I just discovered your blog here and had to post something.
I realy admire your honesty! It’s so good to know that even on the other side of the planet (I live in europe) people are struggling with the same things I struggle with. And in fact, we all do, because we are all human beings. But few of us have the courage to show that. I’d just like to say thank you for being you. Because by doing that, you encourage other people to do the same. And that makes the world a better place.
April 24, 2011 at 8:40 am |
I am emotionally needy as well! I struggle with trying to get attention either positive or negative and although I am a Christian sometimes my decision are not God lead so I struggle on how to overcome this emotional neediness. I do not know but any suggestions are welcome. I thank God for my extremely patient husband!