Yes, you need people
a letter to the younger and bitter version of me
“I hate people” was a daily part of my vocabulary more than I’d like to admit. For years, I remember getting to a place where the thought of social interaction to any degree irritated me. Think about how people get road rage, but I generally felt the same level of annoyance with everyone at any given time.
I would say it started in my journey working in retail, a car dealership to be more specific. I went from actually loving my job and being excited to be there and happy to help, to still loving my job and being able to help but hating the sight of a customer. I mean, only when it was too early or near closing…which I guess you may say, that it makes sense then. I thought so too..until this very feeling or rather, resentment, started to bleed into my overall personality. This turned me into someone very cold, and truthfully kind of dark too. Dark in the sense of feeling like I didn’t “need’ anyone – to some degree, this didn’t include my immediate family. This took a toll on relationships romantic, platonic and familial alike. In 2019, I went through a break up that I fully believe the Lord used to begin the process of my growth. It was after this break up that I started to do a lot of reflecting. We had a great relationship, and we cared about one another a lot but we ultimately just found that it wasn’t working out. It was rough for me, but I’d say this was a cordial break up. You can imagine however, being that it was rough for me, I did a lot of introspective work and one of the things that I almost immediately knew I needed to change was my lack of emotion. This is where the journey began.
This journey has been and is still very messy as is any journey. Life is about constant evolution afterall. Fast forward a few years, and now we’re in 2022. I'm well over that breakup, in a different relationship that had its own level of rockiness, and my parents just bought a home 2 hours away from where I was. I never thought anything of the distance because I was just happy for my parents after years of being unable to find a reasonable option within our county. Little did I realize that I was about to endure the pruning of a lifetime, a pruning that will begin the process of changing me and allow me to begin stepping into who and what God has called me to be. This story would be a little more long-winded than I would intend for this one article but it is a vital part of this very topic.
So after plenty of months of ups and downs and navigating all the in betweens, I was still playing the game of going to church and making a run for it. Until one day, I met the right person. I met my friend, who kindly introduced himself to me. This friend then introduced me to his sister and the rest was history…quite literally. See, my friend, Patience has the gift of making connections, which I didn’t know at the time, and to this day is a great blessing to my life. Patience, operating in her gift, introduced me to a plethora of people, but I also connected with her. In another outing we briefly mentioned the idea of co hosting a friendsgiving together and 6 weeks later there were over 40 people who I hadn’t even known yet, at my house.
This big group of beautiful people that I had the honor and privilege to know became some of my favorite people and to make a very long winded story short – this was only the beginning of what it looked like to start having friends that actually cared about me, but also were on the same mission. This was also when I had to learn to also be a good friend. This then stretched me. This began to sanctify me. Because when we have a godly community thus people walking the same mission and now are walking in being willing to call you up and call you out, (Galatians 6:1)this allows space for the inevitable sanctification. We were never called to do life alone.
“Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.”
Galatians 6:1-2
Never being meant to do life alone is a theme we see written throughout scripture.
To name a few:
Genesis 2:18
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
Hebrews 10:24-25
Galatians 6:2
Proverbs 27:17
We are encouraged for a reason – because as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend (Proverbs 27:17)
Needless to say, the thought of “I don’t need people” or the feeling of “I hate people” was coming from a place of my flesh, coming from a place that was a sign that I was cleary:
Not seeking God first
Trying to life in my own strength
Overall distant from the Lord
I’ve had to refrain from letting this become too long because there have been a lot of seasons of change on my journey of understanding the need for community, many lessons, many shifts, and many levels of sanctification. But I share this to share my heart and the “thus far” of where I am. I am now in a season where I so specifically felt God call me to a season of getting more intentional about community. To lean into serving in the local church, alongside my brother and sister in Christ, and even more specifically – to steward sisterhood in this season. I get to walk in this season where I’m watching my dreams unfold, and within that God has been very clear about the need for me to also have my community.
