Still years after the exclusion I haven't found satisfying lasting friendships. Well, kids take much of energy. But also I haven't got used with the relationsips in a 'usual' congregation. There is a time for free conversations with coffe/tea and some food together each Sunday, but often nobody comes to join my family in our table. Everybody seems to have their other friends to talk with. Well there is a custom of greeting by hand and perhaps saying some words, but then they go their way. And I tend to be too occupied with kids or some problems and sometimes just overwhelming loneliness that I don't have extra energy and ideas to start to talk with somebody myself. It may sound just complaining, but it's a fight for me not to feel too useless and unimportant there and alone with my daily struggles.
Especially hard is when an important e-mail (in church context) is not answered or the answer delays. Then I feel really anxious, rejected etc, similar to the exclusion experience. I get fear I wrote or did something wrong causing the rejection, and hopelessness I can ever learn to fit in and feel really belonging.
In the community there was a good habit to answer e-mails just 'received' or 'thank you', so that the sender knew it was received and seen. Well there was much less e-mail communication than people may have outside the community but anyway I find it was a good habit.
Especially hard is when an important e-mail (in church context) is not answered or the answer delays. Then I feel really anxious, rejected etc, similar to the exclusion experience. I get fear I wrote or did something wrong causing the rejection, and hopelessness I can ever learn to fit in and feel really belonging.
In the community there was a good habit to answer e-mails just 'received' or 'thank you', so that the sender knew it was received and seen. Well there was much less e-mail communication than people may have outside the community but anyway I find it was a good habit.
2 comments:
Thank you for sharing your experience. Enough i have not been "in same community" i think i can relate with your fears of being rejected.
I do experienced it in my first church-the free church where i was part of 4,4 years. There was two meetings in sundays-sunday service and healing school and between was "church cafe". As i am introvert and were with different financial state then first when snacks were free i was almost alone. And later i could not attend in eating due financial issues.
"often nobody comes to join my family in our table. Everybody seems to have their other friends to talk with."
It seems that this is a issue of bigger communities. When there is larger community, there is tendency to create sub-groups and some can feel excluded.
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