AN E-MAIL ON RELATIONSHIPS

Some Context:

Recently, I crashed a girl’s date that my wife was having with a friend of ours.  Being the narcissist that I am, I was able to quickly turn the conversation toward myself.  I started discussing how I feel that I am lacking solid relationships in my life with Christian men.  I was moved to see an e-mail a week later from our friend proposing an idea for how I might be able to begin to foster those relationships, which was to take a class at the C.S. Lewis Institute here in DC because they have a one-year program specifically geared toward building relationships and mentoring.  What is below is, in my opinion, a raw response.  That is, a stream-of-consciousness writing that has little revision from the original--a brief explosion of thoughts and gratitude for our friend’s listening ear and responding heart.  However, I thought what I shared might be helpful for others who may be in the same proverbial boat so I decided to share it here.

Regarding Common Change:  This is a group that my wife and I belong to with three other friends, where we pool money to meet needs outside of our group with the hopes of fostering relationships.  You can find more about it here.

 And the E-mail:

So...I had opened your e-mail about the C.S. Lewis Institute and then set it back to “unopened” with the intention of responding a bit at length about it...and...then I got the e-mail about the contributions regarding Common Change and sent you what I would call a placating e-mail regarding the C.S. Lewis center to be able to unoffensively inquire about Common Change : ))

With that out in the open, here is what I want to respond regarding the issue I have with guy friends that you heard and thought through after our conversation around our dining room table and then tried to pose a solution for.  First, thanks for listening!  Helene and I were talking about this issue last night when I had an epiphany regarding this.  The conclusion I came to is that I do not have the guys in my life that I believe I need because I am the one who wants control of who those guys are.  There are three guys that I am interested in--funny that sounds like I am single and gay doesn't it? : ))  Anyway, I have never asked God if these are the guys that he wants to have me invest in and to invest in me--I have completely left God out of the equation with this.  I try to spend time with these guys with invites on a regular basis and consistently get blown off, which fucking pisses me off!!  Helene, however, was kind enough to point out that I do exactly the same thing with some guys, or at least one, that seem to be really wanting to spend time with me.  One of them has a cabin about two hours away and he has invited me there, without exaggeration, probably a dozen times.  My response up until this past weekend has always been something along the lines of "Man, I would love to come out and join you but I just cannot make it."  This is mainly because I work Saturdays, but still, I feel like this turning down of invites certainly fits the mold of what I am so critical of with the guys that I would choose.  However, I decided to finally take him up on the invitation and spent Memorial Day weekend with him at his cabin and had a great time!

Also, I notice that when folks consistently complain about issues in their lives that center around other people and how those people are not meeting their needs, they need to step back and seriously consider the common denominator in that scenario, namely themselves--when you point a finger at someone you have four pointing back at yourself.  While I feel the love with your suggestion of the C.S. Lewis Institute, I know that it generally takes time for me to develop relationships, so I feel like that would be starting all over for me.  In the last year or so, I have taken a really positive step of finding guys in my life where we can mutually speak and spur one another on.  However, instead of seeking God and trying to hone in on who he is leading me to, I have tried to pursue this exclusively with my own senses.

           
I share all of this so that you can pray that I entrust this area of my life to God and seek him first.  Again, I feel like I have made the first step of putting myself in the correct context to develop those relationships, but I really need to focus on the next step of being open to allowing those that God would choose to enter my life, rather than focusing exclusively on those that I would choose.