On Dis/Connection.

For the last little while, largely due to a couple of things happening recently, I've been trying to look into connection, and disconnection. More specifically, why people leaving - as in, moving somewhere else, or perhaps if they were only ever here for a short time - has such an effect on me.

And you try to turn to God for answers. But with me, he's never particularly chatty. He seems to talk to me through events that happen, and in his time, rather than when I'm asking. And not often particularly clearly, or specifically. Which is annoying. But not much I can do about that.

As such, it's something I've attempted to think about myself. At first, what I came up with was that it didn't actually effect me at all, and what these people were saying was silly. It wasn't their fault that they were leaving; that was just what was happening, and there wasn't anything that they or I could do about it. As such, why dwell on it? That's what seemed logical.

But it's emotion. It's not logical.

Recently, I got a sliver of insight into this. Our church has been looking around for a Youth Pastor for a little bit now, and recently, there was a bit of a hum about it, to the degree that I knew it would be happening soon. And then it got announced just over a week ago at church - and who was it? Well, it was actually the guy that used to be our worship pastor/leader/co-ordinator (actually, that one sounds too businessy, but whatever). He left about four years ago and went up to Forster, and recently got married up there.

Back when he was still around, he was quite a good friend of mine. He was one of the first guys to help me discover myself as a musician, and to really encourage my creative side. He was one of the first people - from memory, at least - that I actually showed my songs to. And he helped me start to record a couple of them. We never got very far, but it was really good having him there and doing that for me.

And he left, and that was quite hard. And I knew that he needed to leave, but that never really helps that much. There's been a bit of a habit of people leaving from our church. There's a habit of people coming as well, thankfully, otherwise we'd be quite empty.

But when I heard that he was coming back - I was on cloud nine. It was never something that I could have ever expected, and it was just so out of the blue, and I was just - so happy, so joyful, absolutely over the moon. And I suppose that reaction to that news made me realise how much that him leaving had meant to me in the first place; it helped me to realise that this was something that was real, and was there.

I'm still not exactly sure how to define it, or understand it. But this is my best guess at the moment; that I value connection. Because it's not something I'm used to, not something that I'd had a lot of experience with, particularly not a few years back. And so to me, when I connected with someone - properly connected with them, that is, not just someone who's a friend, but someone who really cares - that was something that I really valued, really cared about.

So losing that - having that be cut short, so to speak, is hard. Because, sure, you might be able to stay in touch through email, or phone, or Facebook, or Skype, or whatever. And you might make new connections. But it's not the same, and they're never going to be the same. That's a connection that you've lost, and it seems like forever.

But, sometimes. It doesn't have to be.

:)