OCTOBER 2005

The Unencountered

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13: 34–35

I recently attended a conference on cutting and suicide. If you love goth as much as I do you will eventually encounter both behaviors. I’d like to be an instrument of healing to those that cut and to those that consider suicide a viable option so I’m trying to prepare myself as best as I can to deal with these issues.

At the conference, I was having lunch with three clinical social workers. They wanted to know what this goth thing is all about and I wanted to know what they were all about so we had a cool discussion. When we spoke of psychological trends, one of the social workers quoted a mentor of hers who said that the problem is that we are “unencountered.”

That word hit me. Do you know how that is? It’s like a burst of insight. I wish I could remember the name of the person that said it. I’d love to give her credit for it.

I couldn’t get the word off of my mind. It resonated with me and, as I reflected on its meaning and application, everything and everyone around me began to speak to this one issue. Articles, comments, and insights came to me effortlessly—then I saw myself differently. I knew God was changing me or that He wanted to.

One of the resources that came to me, I believe by divine providence, was an interview with Claire Danes. I adore Claire Danes. I’ll see any movie she is in, it doesn’t matter to me what the film is about or who else is in it, if Claire is there, I’m there. So I went home from my conference, saw this interview and started reading. Claire said that she has felt an innate sense of loneliness all of her life. She said, “a part of me desired fame because I associated it with love. That was a total mistake. Fame doesn’t end loneliness... famous or not you can still feel invalid and unloved."

Unencountered, lonely, invalid, and unloved. Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?

There is an ache in me to encounter and be encountered, to know and to be known, to love and to be loved for who I really am. That ache is becoming more intense with each passing year.

I believe God made me for His pleasure but He also gave me a need for community, to be together with other people, to love them and allow them to love me. Resisting love when it is offered or refusing to give it seems to frustrate one of God’s purposes in my life and that frustration is more damaging than the hurt of unrequited love.

Relationships have always been the source of my greatest joys and sorrows but I dare not run from them in fear of the pain they might cause. Isolation, to be truly unencountered, is infinitely worse.

I form attachments quickly and easily and I keep hoping that my friendships, once formed, will last into eternity. I used to think that the intensity of my attachments was a personality flaw. I once believed this because other people told me so. I don’t listen to that kind of criticism much anymore. I used to apologize for falling so easily in love and getting all squishy on people but I’m really tired of apologizing for who I am. I am what I am. God made me who I am. He’s into me and that’s all that matters in the long run.

But attachments come with a heavy price.

I suffer.

I suffer a lot.

I used to pray against the pain like Jesus in Gethsemane, “Take this cup away from me,” but then I realized that in some way the depth of my suffering is a measure of my love and when I saw that I began to delight in the pain.

Love, the experience of love and its degree of intensity is to some extent relative to individual taste and discretion. For example, if someone wants more of your time and attention than you want to give, you might describe that person as “needy” or “clingy” or some other equally derogatory term. If, on the other hand, you want more time and attention from someone else than what they are willing to give then you might describe your reluctant friend as having “a problem with intimacy,” or you might say that the person is “cold,” “selfish,” or “insensitive.”

The problem is never with poor little ol’ me, is it?

At this point you are supposed to say, “Oh I get it. We are better people for loving even if our love is never returned in kind.”

We will never be able to control the feelings, emotions or behavior of another person but we are in complete control of our own behavior toward them. God’s mandate is that we love each other not that we receive love in return. When we love with His kind of love, in purity and with an unselfish motive, the ache inside will be satisfied if not by the love that comes back to us then by God Himself for when we give our lives to each other in this way we unite with Him, we feel with Him and He delights in us.

Our Gathering is close at hand. All of the programming and activities are nice but what really matters to me is the encounter. It happened last year. I hope it happens again this year for all of us. Allowing ourselves to be deeply and wonderfully encountered and then seeking to share that encounter with others is the best way I know of to fulfill our Lord’s great commission, to “evangelize.”

In effect, we are saying, “I have got some really good news. God loves us. His love is demonstrated in this in that while we were yet sinners, while we hated Him, He died for us. He loves us so much and with His help we will someday learn to love each other.”

If we do it right we won’t have to say it or preach it. We won’t have to say a word because they will know we are Christians by the way we “encounter” each other. They will know that we are Christians by our love.

So watch out.

I might just get attached to you!

Your little brother,
David Dellman