Apprentice

It’s reflection time so I decided to blog a little. I’ve been at Encounter now since Sunday. Encounter is a fantastic experience but it does tend to shake you up (in a good way). My naturally introverted ways are really standing out while I get used to all these strangers who I’ll soon come to love as brothers and sisters. Crowds freak me out initially and I tend to wander off on my own a lot.  The irony is that I really love people, I like spending time with them, I love a good chat and having a laugh. So at the moment there’s a tension between my love for people and my need to be alone sometimes until I get used to the crowd, so I end up being lonely.

I’ve been wondering why it is that crowds freak me out so much. I can’t blame it all on me being introverted, all that really means is that I need to recharge by being alone every so often. I think it’s that crowds are often people who don’t know me well so I feel a pressure to construct a good image of myself for them - I’m afraid that I might come across as less than perfect and only human. I end up coming off as aloof and cold. Some people that I love very much started out thinking that I didn’t like them at all because of the way I acted when we first met, just because I was trying desperately not to make any mistakes and didn’t know how to act.

For the friends that can still remember the first time we met just please think back to how I was - very quiet, not wanting to intrude in any way. Everything about me said “don’t mind me, you won’t even know I’m here” (even when you invited me as a guest).  If we ate or drank together in that first meeting think back to what I had - something bland and tidy, nothing too complicated, nothing I could make a mess of. Do you remember the plain chicken sandwiches, the bottles of water? Yeah, I was trying to be careful, to not make a mess.

Introversion is not a sin, but living as though I am neither loved by God or by my brothers and sisters in this wonderful family is and I repent of that. I will dare to risk making an ass out of myself in loving other people and enjoying them and in loving God and enjoying Him.

I’m keeping the running up while I’m here. One of the mentors here has a couple of marathons under his belt and we went for a run on Monday. It felt like about 3 miles but I’m not sure because I didn’t take my Nike + stuff since I felt that would be a bit anti-social for my first run with company. Part of the run was on the beach here at Greystones and that was really hard, the sand is so soft and running over it was pretty hard on my legs. I’ve decided to abandon numbering my running days while I’m here at Greystones because I won’t be blogging that often and it could get very un-natural trying to refer to Day X and Day Y.