IN A CROWDED ROOM ALONE The story is told about a man who had some tropical fish that he loved dearly. "This man kept a large fifty-gallon aquarium in his apartment and enjoyed watching the myriad rainbow of fins flashing within his miniature ocean. Since the man traveled often for his job, he equipped the aquarium with state-of-the-art mechanisms, which would automatically clean the tank, release food, and keep the water temperature constant. Once, however while he was out of town for several days, the man returned home only to discover that he had not adjusted the thermostat on the aquarium. The water had over heated and killed his beloved collection of exotic fish. In his grief over the loss, the man imagined what the fish must have thought and felt as the temperature rose and the water became hotter and hotter. "Did they scream in silence? Did they beg for someone, anyone, to turn down the temperature? he wonder if his fish had silently screamed out for him in their hour of need?. There are many men today silently screaming for help. I can relate. In High School English class we were tasked with writing an original poem. The poem could be about anything. I don’t remember much about the poem that I wrote but I have never forgotten how it began. “I sit in a crowded room, alone.” At the time I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to those words but I knew that it was how I felt. To an extent, I guess, I dismissed those feelings as some pubescent drama that all teenagers face. Looking back now, after being a pastor for some years, I feel confident in saying that those feelings were not just a part of puberty. There have been many times when I have felt that life was just a really long pressure cooker trying to force me to give up and float to the top like the dead fish. Yet, in my desperation and frustration, I could not verbalize any of it, so I was alone. I wasn’t physically alone. I had my friends, my family, my co-workers, and my church body, but they only saw what I showed them or what they wanted to see. Emotionally, I was alone. As I have read books written by men for men I have begun to understand that these “alone” feelings appear to be very common. I can’t help but wonder if this is really what God meant when he said, “It is not good that man should be alone;” On the outside we are the big, strong, tuff men with bulging biceps, fancy cars, nice clothes, a house, a wife, and kids, but on the inside we are still scared little boys. We play the role of employee, husband, father, son, brother, friend, deacon, etc. but we are really just dancing to some one else’s tune hoping that we don’t make a mistake and get found out. As we try to hide ourselves away we keep all kinds of secrets. Some of them are dark and some of them aren’t, but all of them can be destructive. They keep us from allowing anyone to get close enough to us to find out the truth. They force us to put up walls around ourselves to protect our hearts or the secrets but the problem is that sometimes these same walls become the prison of solitude that trap so many of us. We won’t talk about this with our friends. No those conversations are about sports, work, the weather, and any other superficial topic. We can’t confide in anyone at church because then we will be judged and outcast. Heaven forbid we ever tell our wives because they might think less of us or even worse use it against us. So we stay trapped, hurting, silent, and alone. Well, I am not content to sit around and die in silence. I will admit that I am scared of failing. I will admit that I don’t always know how to treat those close to me and those l care about. Sometimes I don’t even know how to talk to them. I will admit that I sometimes feel like crying for no real reason, but I don’t because “big boys don’t cry”. I will admit that I am not satisfied with my job. I will admit that I didn’t have a good relationship with my father and that I really didn’t have a good male role model growing up. I will admit that there are times when I just want to curl up with my close friends and have them hold me and comfort me because…..dare I say it – I am human and I have needs, fears, worries, and emotions. I am a man but I still hurt and I refuse to be alone.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 20:20:49 +0000
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