Living in a Bubble

I think people fear being alone.

Not alone as in the-house-is-blissfully-empty-and-I-can-curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-with-a-good-book alone.

I'm talking isolation from human connection.

I used to have anxiety attacks as a young child. Looking back I see them as moments of mind jarring terror when I felt disconnected from love, from humanity.

Lost on my own island of isolation it didn't matter that I bumped elbows, shared couch space and co-existed with human beings on a daily basis. I felt a galaxy of unbridgeable, frighteningly empty space separated us.

Space in which my emotions felt too big for me and too heavy to share.

And sadly, I don't think I was alone in feeling this way. I think many people feel disconnected on some level.

I think this is why people create movements of thought (or religions) that are based on the belief that people are a part of the whole (the New Age movement is a big proponent of this). Everything and everybody is interconnected.

When someone feels truly alone, they are at risk for unhealthy relationships. They crave interconnectedness no matter how damaging. Better to be with someone who blame-shifts or abuses than to not belong to anyone.

To be isolated without God is to feel despair and search for connection to something.

And yet sometimes, even with God, we struggle with living in an isolated bubble of knowledge. Knowing God loves us, knowing people love us, knowing we have "value," and yet it might as well be a million miles from us, so unreachable from the glass we look through that it feels untrue.

Believing that no one can penetrate the isolation, the concept of unconditional love is so risky, so unbelievable to actually chance.

Sometimes we have to push beyond what our emotions feel and live instead by what we know is true.

Emotions can be unstable, unreliable measures of truth, leading us to peaks of euphoria and canyons of despair, tethered to nothing but the whims of circumstance.

But if you make the choice to live by what you know to be true (sometimes you have to take that step on blind, teeth-chattering, faith)—God loves you, others love you—your feet will stay grounded in reality.

And we can choose to reach beyond the bubble and learn that we really can live outside the fear that separates us from others.

Magical Moments

I'm on a writing deadline and apologize for not blogging last week. Today I'm posting a guest blog I wrote for another blogger.)

Books have always held magic for me. I walk into a bookstore with lust in my heart and money in hand, hurriedly threading my way between patrons, my eyes feasting on the colorful titles that line the shelves, searching for the right story to match whatever mood I happen to be in.

Just the smell of the ink on the new pages sends a thrill coursing through me and engulfs my time and attention for hours as each turned page takes me deeper into adventures previously unknown.

The end of a book is something to be both anticipated and dreaded.

Books are more satisfying than the richest dessert (and that's saying a lot for this chocoholic—though a good book and a slice of chocolate torte have sent me into raptures).

I first discovered the magic of books in the second grade. My tiny elementary school, with its three rooms and forty children encompassing eight grades, stressed the importance of reading. I unexpectedly reached a new juncture when I was forced to check out a book to read on my own.

I don't recall the titles in the series I fell in love with, but they had rich yellow covers that sent a wave of anticipation through me each time I discovered a new yellow spine hiding among the brown and ecru colored books that lined the bookshelves.

I read them all, over and over, these delicious yellow books that regaled the legends of the gods and goddesses of Hawaii. Being a model participant in my Sunday School class, it felt a bit daring to be reading something so pagan.

But these books transported me from the cold, rainy winters of Oregon to lush, balmy rainforests, warm lagoons with cascading waterfalls, and to the volcano where Pele wielded her power.

Those books opened a door that took me from an existence of shyness and isolation into a world where I became strong, confident and capable—the heroine who could solve any problem, who could say "no" with fire in her eyes.

These books started me on a path of learning about lands foreign to my landscape and showed me that books could take me to places beyond myself.

In a sense, books saved me and opened my eyes to what could be.