Out of Isolation, Into a Fellowship of the Heart

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone."
-Genesis 2:18a

Isolation is something that can be a struggle for me. I enjoy other people and love deep conversation. But at the same time I am naturally introverted, I love to be home and am perfectly happy to spend an entire weekend by myself with some books, some movies and my piano.

None of that bothers me. It is who I am and I make no apologies for it. But at the same time, I know full well that the enemy loves to exploit those introverted parts of my heart and drive me into isolation.

I've spent much of the last year praying against isolation and that God would lead Annie and I to a good fellowship. It's been awesome seeing Him come through.

This was a bad week. Not because of the stress of a new baby. Actually, Elise hasn't been all that stressful and I'm never more relaxed than when I'm holding her. But despite how well things are going with the baby I felt very assaulted this week. To start with we had a flat tire on our van. It wasn't a huge deal but having a fussy baby in the car well I'm trying to get the spare on made the situation that much more stressful. Add in the normal stress of work and the terrifying economic news and the week was not off to a great start.

But the real assault started Wednesday. Sam, our golden retriever puppy, was outside on his tie out. Since we've been busier with the baby we've tried to have him out there more so he can have some time to explore outside on his own. Anyway, he saw me and took off in my direction at full speed. He reached the end of his rope, his neck snapped back violently and he screamed like I've never heard him scream before. My first thought was, "his neck is broken." Maybe it was an overreaction but I felt positive he was going to die. I ran to him, scooped him up and drove him to the emergency vet.

Sam was ok after a while. He irritated some nerves in his neck pretty bad but the vet seemed confident he'd make a full recovery. She gave us some pain meds and sent us home.

All day Thursday Sam was doing great. He was walking around as though nothing had happened. He wasn't too fond of his new harness collar just yet but he was adjusting. Around 5, I was doing some work in my office and I heard Sam chewing on one of his bones. I thought nothing of it and kept doing what I was doing. After about 5 minutes I got up and realized it wasn't a bone he was chewing on. He'd found his pain medication bottle and by the time I'd found him he'd eaten every pill in there. For the second time in 24 hours I thought my dog was going to die.

We called the vet and were given instructions on how to make him throw up. Thankfully it worked and he seems to be ok. But it was a very scary couple of hours.

On Friday I felt beat up and depressed. I felt terrible for leaving Sam's pills where I did and emotionally wrung out from the previous two days. Sam may be just a dog but he's also become a member of the family and it was very tough feeling that close to losing him twice. I felt depressed like I haven't in a long time.

Friday night was small group. During the day I didn't feel like going or doing anything else but sit on the couch and feel bad. But we went and it was awesome. It's a fairly new group but in the few months we've been meeting we've already grown close. Spending a few hours with our fellowship of the heart was refreshing and healing. I left feeling like a new man

Genesis 2:18, where God says, "It is not good for a man to be alone", obviously has to do with marriage but I think the application goes even deeper. Marriage is important but we also need intimate fellowship and community within the Body of Christ. Now, I'm all for going to church and I think larger meetings of the Body like that are important. But we also need a small intimate fellowship. It's impossible to be intimate with a church of 2,000 or even 200. Church is important but we need more.

When I first started praying a year ago for this sort of intimate fellowship a year ago I didn't know if it would ever happen. I'm pretty shy and am very capable of being socially awkward, saying dumb things, and being obnoxious. But God has been faithful and it's awesome. If you don't have a fellowship of the heart start praying for one and fighting for one now. It's available if we ask for it, even for the introverted and socially awkward.