A caring community

This is kind of a continuation from the last post on my frustrations with the professionalization of care in America.



I feel like people have just sent me to specialized people to get "fixed". Everyday ordinary people have become extremlely wary of talking to me or offering any sort of wisdom or advice. The most common statement I get from the people I confess my life to is "I wish there was something I could do for you." This kind of closes me off to people in general because I know I am just letting everyone else into this cycle of guilt because me telling them I am having problems does nothing for either one of us besides make them feel bad that they can't do anything. If they do begin to offer any sort of advice it is normally pointing me to a therapist.



So I do know that this is something that the average person does not feel comfortable talking about...it is an awkward subject that can cause anyone to squirm again. Believe me...I know...I am living it.



But I feel deep in my heart that hiding is no longer the answer *hence the web blog*. I am sick of hiding behind the pretend smile that everyone wants to see. I'm afraid of letting the real me that has problems show because I know it will be rejected....but this is the fear that every single girl with an eating disorder in America hides behind....and I don't think it even goes for eating disorders alone...anyone who has a problem that doesn't have a quick fix solution, namely every single one of us in this world at one point or another in our lives.



A while ago, after beginning to realize that therapists were not working out for me (and I wasn't really working for the therapists), I started questioning what I was looking for. Why did I feel so alone? Why was nothing changing? Would things ever change?



I didn't have complete answers to these questions but I came to the conclusion that I just was looking for someone who cared. Now part of this is Ana just screaming constantly, "No one cares about you" but some of it was rooted in reality that I was facing...especially in terms of the Christian church (at least in this country) in that we have been taught not to care....or maybe this is just my church experience. This isn't completely true I guess, we pick and choose what we care about. We care about things that have easy solutions...we like concrete things that we can put an answer with....when it comes to complicated matters of the heart, the therapists are called.



However, I am realizing I am becoming the guinea pig to find a solution to my own problem. Somewhere inside of me I know I am not alone in my desire to be cared for and to live in community...we all have problems that we hide behind, feeling like no one else could possibly understand our pain. Some of this is true, sometimes Jesus really is the only one that can fully sympathize with what we are going through. However, if I have learned anything throughout all of this it is that the biggest lie Satan throws at us is that we are meant to do this alone. God gave us other people in our life to learn from and to help each other grow closer to him.



Peter Block writes about community, “We are in community each time we find a place where we belong…belong is to be related and to be a part of something. It is membership, the experience of being at home in the broad sense of the phrase. It is the opposite of thinking that wherever I am, I would be better off somewhere else. Or that I am still forever wandering, looking for that place where I belong…to belong is to know, even in the middle of the night, that I am among friends.”



Now how amazing does that sound?



Henri Nouwen writes in his book Life of the Beloved, “As the elevator took us to the eleventh floor, I felt an eerie silence among the passengers who were almost elbow to elbow. How close and yet how far apart.”



I have felt the very same way riding on the T....looking around at the faces that refuse to even make eye contact with you, for fear of being caught off guard and showing their vulnerability.



Again...more questions than answers....and I have a whole lot more to ramble on about....but trying to keep things in semi small chunks so that is it for now.