It's late. I'm feeling deep and introspective... and tired. I was thinking today that my whole life I've always felt like the outsider. As if the people around me only tolerate me. I can be involved in a church for years and still feel just slightly the odd-one-out. In fact, most of the time I feel this way within my own family. Once in a while I'm told I'm great, that so-and-so loves me, that I will be missed when I'm gone to Mexico.. I guess I believe them. I have no reason to doubt them. "Feeling loved" or appreciated is not the issue.
I wonder if I haven't been given a gift. Although I have a track record of claiming that things are probably a blessing when really they're likely psych-outs. Example: my "gift" of being a content single person may or may not come from a past filled with deceit and hurt and a lack of ability to trust, or it could be the gift of singleness! I prefer to stake my claim to the latter since it means there's not only nothing wrong with me, but I'm a step ahead of the ones praying for X to look her way.
In this instance, though, I think my gift is that of feeling literally like an alien in this world. 1 Peter 1:17... "live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear."
I meditate constantly on leaving. As in leaving leaving. My prayers are often riddled with "Come down now," "I want to go Home," "Some idea, this flesh..." I must sound like a total whiner to God. Probably the reason I sense that I am often an afterthought for others is because this mentality was meant for me. I simply am not to belong. This is part of my call -- to be the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not sad or lonely. Despite my emotional cripple, I am indeed a content single person, and I cherish my friendships, and deeply love and care for my family. It's just a sense that I get... mostly stemming from practical evidence, but sometimes this feeling just washes over me, like I grew a third leg, or started speaking a different language that no one understands, and people don't think to be around me as much as they do friend A or B.
This is all just something I've been chewing on, and praying about... Feel free to join in.
