Outsider

It wasn't like this before, and I have been warned. I believed the stories half-heartedly, and I guess because of that -- I wasn't surprised when I stepped into a church all by myself and felt lonely.

There I was -- in a community of so-called family 4 life brothers and sisters, and I haven't felt so disconnected. It was partly my fault and partly theirs. But if I had enough balls to say it, it was mostly my fault. The shell of me didn't want to open up next to anyone around me, hoped they didn't ask that I raise my hand if it was my first time there, wished the music would fade up the awkward hellos with the people next to me, and prayed for an opening to leave before the service was over and fellowship begins.

So what does this have to do with the series of "doing something I'm proud of/doing something different" idea? Well -- it's so easy to get back into the Christian fray of things, so easy to step into that bubble that I comfortably ran in my college years, unable to understand the outsiders who felt excluded. For once -- I needed to understand the other side of the story that prompts the non-Christian response: "If none of my friends are going to be in heaven, why should I even go?" Absurdity becomes clarity, and I need that.

On a side note -- there was plenty of great words of wisdom from the speaker, Tony Campolo. But the blog won't be a page full of empty promises and unaccomplishable commitments. They'll be words of action -- a testimony to what I've done. So until I have the courage to take Mr. Campolo's words and sell all my possessions to the poor and walk the earth unashamed to be a Christian, I will keep my thoughts and my raging dreams inside -- for now.

There's nothing worse that commitments that go unfulfilled. But there's nothing better than great dreams that come to life.