I am an interesting combination of personality. Most would call me an extrovert. Those who know me well understand my deep introverted side. I am both. I need people. I love people. I am the oldest of seven kids... you can't escape needing people when you grow up in a small house full of people! I also need space, and quiet, and alone time. You also can't escape needing solitary times of reflection and introspection when you live in a small house full of people!
Yet, I was that was before we moved into a smaller house and before we had as many people in the family. I've always needed both. You can ask my parents. When I was eight and nine I would go wandering off in our woods, thinking I'd been gone for 20 mins only to find it had been hours and they were freaking out that I might have died or something (you can sense my contrition, can't you? lol). At the same time that I yearned for this solitary adventure, I would return to life so refreshed that you would barely be able to contain me. My parents were always encouraging me to "go outside and play"... being old enough to understand what that means now, that translates to "you are WAY too hyperactive, so go get out your energy and don't come back until you'll stop breaking things and running your siblings into dressers..." (oops, again). Yeah.
So many things never really leave us, and I am in so many ways just the same, although I've learned very well how to mask it all. Those who sit next to me most often in class know that my leg is always bouncing or my fingers tapping or my attention span spreading to include fun comics and little notes and side comments that may or may not pertain to the lecture (most recently those comics depict me hitting my head against a wall repeatedly). And on the other side of life, I get home and am all too happy to become a recluse, playing guitar or reading or just being alone.
In the spiritual realm of life, this is easy to understand, even if in psychology is is less so. I have two options. Go to prayer, and actually listen. Really receive. Allow the Lord to tell me who I am. Receive his love. Or go to prayer and... not receive. Fail to really hear his words. Fail to know myself anew.
When I receive, his Love is abundant. It overflows. There's a crazy torrent running through me and there is no practical way to handle that aside from allowing it to spill all over the place onto others around me.
When I think I am static and that perhaps, I already know myself... that is when I suffer. When I decide the wineskin isn't quite worn out, and it could stand another day or two before I need to face getting re-outfitted, that is when I can't handle the world.
How can I give if I do not receive? Moreover, how can I receive from others (and the world at large) if I do not give? There needs to be some emptiness for what others bring to have somewhere to go. I can't pay attention or care or be compassionate or focused if there's just too much inside that isn't being moved through me. That's where the introvert can cause real problems. When my introspection does not lead to greater self-love and then greater self-gift, but instead remains fixated on whatever issues or problems or skills have caught its attention. Then I remain self-absorbed and unable to really relate to others.
On the other side of the coin, the extrovert can cause just as many problems, because the more I get caught up in the "high" of joy that I often have when I am around friends and family, I assume a level of "everything is good in life" that also means "no need to pay attention to myself" and therefore means "suddenly, I don't know who this girl is anymore." I hope that makes sense.
The point is that the need for balance is very evident. Too much of a good thing never made more sense than when dealing with our hearts and souls. To go to the Lord and receive and hear and allow him to speak is vital and necessary. But to stay there and never go out and give from the abundance, to never get emptied so that I can return to be refilled.. that's no good either. I must enter into a continuous (and dare I say, habitual) cycle of being given to, and then giving from that wealth. Once I am a pauper again (which should be the next day), I will return for more of what I need. The "cycle" shouldn't scare me, but encourage me. I should be thrilled that every day is another point of discovery, of starting over. Not that anything has been lost from the day before, but exactly the opposite: everything from the day before was so potent that who I am now ought to be someone new. I ought to be changed, touched, reformed, affected in some way, from my interactions with the world and God.
Truly, the balance is generally much harder to maintain than simply going to prayer with an open heart. There are weekends or weeks where no time is "your time" and you just loathe people by the end. There are also weekends or weeks where the emptiness of the house or the lack of relationships is the loudest echo that you've ever heard, and it perpetually goes on, and you fear you will never hear the end of it. Neither are good, to this extreme. Both are needed, when appropriately given.
The stillness we need to move, and the movement needs to be stilled.
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