Pulling Away from Planet "Look at Me, Look at Me!"

Almost every summer a lot of people from my church go out to OPC Family Camp, which is a camping experience for members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church...and probably their friends...and, um....

Okay, seriously, I don't know the Family Camp rules. I've never gone. It seems to me that it would be a week full of things that make me uncomfortable: bugs, sunscreen, dirt, camping, sleeping on hard surfaces and/or with lots of noise around, barely sanitary bathrooms, and large groups of people who've known each other for all their lives.

It's hard to feel fully at home in a group of people who are talking about all their shared history. Not that I want people to pretend their lives didn't start until they met me, but there are two main ways to tell a nostalgic story. One way brings the "newbie" listeners into the experience ("One time when we went to the beach, she and I were so tired we kept taking turns knocking each other down to give ourselves an excuse to stop walking"), and one way excludes them ("It's like that time at the beach." "With the dunes?" "Yeah." "Oh, my word, that was so funny....").

It's hard not to practice exclusionary bonding with people you've known for a while. It's hard to open up your circle to newcomers. I know this. It's also hard to be the person who feels, after years of knowing you, that she'll never quite make it into your inner circle because of the sheer fact that she hasn't known you since you were eight years old, or worked with you, or gone to college with you, or whatever the secret criteria is.

I don't always feel like this, but I do sometimes. And I know it's not very mature, and I've made progress so I don't go into meltdown over it as often as I used to, but I haven't arrived yet. Sometimes I still expect the world to revolve around me, and when people slip out of my orbit it can still frustrate me.

I'm glad the world doesn't really revolve around me. I'm glad my friends have more friends than just me, that I am not the one thing that gives their lives meaning. I'm glad that God has brought so many people into my life and that I can't sabotage any relationship He wants me to have, no matter on what level it is.

The dying part of me wants to be everybody's favorite, no matter when I came on the scene of their lives. The part that is coming increasingly alive knows that real love is bigger and wider and more mysteriously amazing than favorites or timelines. (The more I love, the larger my capacity for love grows.)

Someday I won't avoid anybody because I don't like being second or third or fourth tier. Maybe someday soon.

"For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."--Philippians 2:13