Called to be seperate

On this rather long and winding path I have taken to get closer to Christ…a path I did not choose,  nor did I ask to be placed on…I have found myself being further and further separated from the things of this world and even, for the most part, the people of this world.

I have a sister that not only thrives on social connections but she seems to truly need them. I guess she’s always been that way. I, on the other hand, have never been that way. When I was a child, going to school, I needed…and I stress the word needed because I was lost without her…a best friend. She was always like a security blanket for me. So much so that when she would miss a day of school I was lost…all but didn’t know how to function…without her.

I had several best friends over the years of school and had the same dependency on all of them but as I got older I developed friendships with more of the girls I went to school with. Those friendships filled the days when my best friend wasn’t there. By the time I was in high school I no longer had that need. In fact, by then we had moved so much that I no longer had any close friends. I simply went through my days at school and went home. And I was okay with that.

As the years passed and I became an adult with a family of my own people…friends…came and went, family ties that were once strong faded away while those I had never been close to before became closer. Life…happened. And while it happened I found myself slowly…ever slowly…being pulled from the world and those in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have strong relationships with family. I have friends. But I don’t have the same connections to the world a lot of people seem to have. I don’t need them and quite honestly…I don’t want them.

But looking back over the years I can see a separation from the world in me that started even in childhood. I was always the girl that was happy with one friend. As I grew older I was happy with only family relationships. I never felt the need to be surrounded by friends.

It’s neat to look back over our lives and see how the Lord prepared us for what we are today. The Lord…will separate us from the world. That was the point. It is a point I can’t make though without going all the way back to my childhood. Back to the days when…in kindergarten…I would stand just inside the classroom door and cry until my best friend arrived, back to the days that…when school was just too much…I would cry and the teacher would send me to the nurses office because I didn’t feel good and I would be sent home from school, back to the days when I literally didn’t know what to do on a day when my best friend was absent.

I was separated then. Separated from all the kids around me, separated from the life of school. I had no interest in it and no desire to be even a small part of it. And so I had that one friend that I was close to…and that made the days bearable.

From those days…the separation never ended. I was so often in the world but rarely was I a part of the world. Even in my teen years.

As a Christian that is a good thing. It’s what we’re called to be in Scripture. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that I began to understand that and it was much more recently that I was able to connect that separation that I feel in me to the calling that was placed upon me.

As I go through life…when I’m in town amongst the ‘world’…I feel no connection to it. There are things I enjoy doing but there is nothing I feel I must do…for myself, not the have to do this kind of tasks of caring for a family and a home.

It is a separation that allows me to enjoy the things in the world but to not feel the need to have the connections and interactions…and experiences…that so many do. It is a separation that takes me from the nonsense of this world and places me in the Lord’s will for me.

This separation…I have had family members say that I make being a Christian harder than it has to be because I separate from so much. What those family members don’t understand is that first, I didn’t choose that separation, it’s just there, and second, the separation makes everything easier. It takes the stresses and pressures of much of this world away and leaves me with a peace that only the Lord can give.