I pose this question after many, many months of soul searching. Wondering if it is just me, or if things have just changed around me and I recognize it more. I try searching for answers only to come to the same conclusion. There isn't anyone who genuinely cares about anyone else. I say this because of some of my own interactions with others.
Oh, I know, I could go into a lot of detail about a lot of things but, that only brings about hurt, anger, pain and more confusion. So in keeping with things that are supposed to be 'christian' I am not going to keep a log of all that sort of stuff (I already have a full dufflebag that needs to be emptied). I am just going to put it all aside and pray. Pray that I am able to gain more insight into what my real purpose is here and if there are people around me who truly do care.
I am trying to get involved in lives of others around me, but seem to have many, many doors shut in my face or just left wide opened and not answered. I am not allowed to become close to those in my community because I am seen as an outsider. This is true of so many small towns where one person can be related to at least 1,000 others in the area. So, in offending one, you in essence offend all of them and if you speak badly about one of them and so on.
Church offers me no better solutions to this problem either. There is truly only so much that one person can do when they ask to be involved in things that are of interest to them, or to just plain out and out ask to be involved to have no follow-up given or just kind of be brushed off like you never said anything at all about your interest or involvement in that project or what not. That being said, there are those who hurt feelings even without any regard to thinking that you were ever asking to be involved. It does hurt and you do feel rejected when those kinds of things happen. And then when you act differently, they say something to someone else who has nothing to do with any of it and what do you say. You really can't because they just wouldn't understand.
That is just plain frustrating. People in a small church don't need to rely just on a few to fill the role of many. This just doesn't work and sure makes others feel pretty alone when the only times you call or make contact is when you want something from them. That is pretty lonely to have a life that doesn't exist except inside the walls of the building. Then I really don't want anything to do with them at all because if that is the way I am treated, I certainly don't want to be part of that. It does give 'Christianity' a really bad name and leaves a really rotten taste in your mouth.
I am so frustrated with all of this and certainly cannot begin to express how I am feeling to them because they would simply say that I don't try hard enough or that its not true. How do they know?? Are they really checking up on me? Certainly not! Any friends there? NO! Anyone care that I don't come? Nope again! Does it really matter that I do or don't come? No and No! Sometimes the pain of that is so real.....I have tried to involve myself, but what I believe that my ministry is and what I have a passion for are not part of what this body is tied to. Those things are beyond where I feel that my calling is. This is stifling and limiting me. I am quite nearly at my wits end of trying to just fit in.
All I have asked for is someone who will be willing to ask me to be involved, a follow-up to a question or an acknowledgment that is not something fake or forced just because it has to be done. I, just like everyone else I know, like to be appreciated for who I am, what I can contribute and what I have that is an offering to make things work better. But that too seems like something that is never going to happen. I can't make people like me. I can't make people want my cell number, I can't make people reach out to me. I try to and get rejected. On so many levels....I am just hurt!
I don't have much to say to them, they are not who I thought they were and this isn't where I belong any more.
Sadly,
Alone
