Alone...

So the thoughts I am about to express are thoughts and feelings that have been whirling around inside my head and heart for a while now, and I want to preface it by saying that I feel so incredibly supported by my friends and family and I am sooo thankful that they are a phone call or not so short drive away. This confession has been a long time coming and it isn't necessarily an easy one for me to admit. But if Carrie Bradshaw can do it, so can I. (In fact watching Season 5 of my favorite television show and hearing the strong single independent Carrie confess this same feeling made me feel not as bad about claiming in.) I feel alone.

The loneliness I feel very seldom has anything to do with my personal life. Ok, sometimes it does. I long for the days when I could sit at the table with coffee and friends that just got it. I miss that. I don't often feel like there are people in my immediate life that are willing to stretch me, pull me, and challenge me to grow. Everyone who has an intimate knowledge of me lives at least 4 hours away and most of them are farther away than that. I miss having intimate friends to sit on the couch with and be ridiculous if I need to be ridiculous. So I guess on some level I feel a personal loneliness. There have been some big issues lately, mostly peripheral to my life, but handling them and dealing with them is always easier when you have a sounding board. I miss that.

The loneliness that has been hitting me the hardest is the loneliness of ministry. This loneliness is sometimes overwhelming. My heart convicts me so strongly in the ministry that I have been given. I had my junior high youth at a gathering this weekend. There were only 4 of them and I was the only chaperon. During one of the worship times, that feeling hit me. I felt alone. I felt like I was constantly handling the situations incorrectly...was I disciplining them too much, was I giving them too much freedom, was I getting frustrated when I shouldn't have gotten frustrated, should I be that annoying youth leader who "overdoes" it in an attempt to look cool for the masses...I wanted someone to hold my hand and say, "Rachel it's going to be alright." I needed someone to say, "10 years from now these youth will look back on this gathering as a changing point in their lives" even if it wasn't true. Being in youth ministry in this congregation is difficult. There aren't many people who even recognize that there's a younger generation out there...I want to make them all watch Pollyanna and remember that young people can impact older ones.

The loneliest ministry though is the outreach ministry. It's so difficult. I feel like there is very little help. People don't seem to care. I can put in 80 hours or 20 and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I don't know how to get a message across. I don't know how to get people excited about the things that I'm excited about and the the things I think God would have us be concerned for. I've been reading a lot of readings from the prophets in the old testament lately. I think prophets had a pretty junky job most of the time...they were called to bring a message that people didn't want to hear. Sometimes I feel that way. People don't want to hear that they should care more about others than they do themselves. We're taught in America to look out for number one, and number one is yourself. Sometimes I feel like church is more about chasing the American Dream than following Jesus. I think it's even more frustrating to me because I know I do it too sometimes...so then I feel hypocritical asking someone to do something that I fail at too. I don't even know if this makes sense. I just wish that I had someone else that cared about it like I do. Someone who was working with me.

I know that God is always with us, and working in and through me, and that I shouldn't feel lonely with God on my side, but I guess sometimes I have trouble recognizing that God is there. I think I'm just in a season of life where when I look ahead at all the things that could happen, and all the things I feel like I could accomplish it just seems so big. Too big. Too big to go it alone. And it's in those moments that I try to remind myself that I'm not going it alone. I just wish I could get that feeling to stick. Loneliness stinks.