Shocking, right?
It did take long enough.
"There are worse things than being alone!" oh yes, you'd better believe it! But once you get away from those worse things... there are also better things than being alone, and even introverts can get lonely. Eventually.
Here it is, July 3rd. The kids have gone to the fireworks, and I stayed home by choice and by introvert habit, but amazingly enough, for once it's
not, "Yippee! I'm finally alone, CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES!"
I'm alone and lonely.
It's a new and fascinating sensation!
That's despite having a new computer that just arrived a couple hours ago and is still sitting in its box. New to me, anyway, haha, just as old as my other one that died; hopefully this old computer works! I haven't had a working PC for half a year now. I've been writing my diary on that same trusty little netbook that came with me when I escaped.
That's despite having a couple different projects I'm working on, sewing, organizing, etc, all of them fascinating. I've recovered enough to feel interest in life, and a looking-forward sensation to doing more things, new things.
That's despite God being so good to me, as he has been recently and all along; not only providing every kind of blessing leaving no lack, but sending another messenger to point out wonders that I hadn't been able to see on my own.
Shouldn't God be enough?
Adam had such a relationship with God as to be in the habit of walking together in the cool of the day, having conversations with the inventor of knowledge, yet he was alone to the point of it being "not good".
I guess that's nothing new, then.
Sigh.
So here I am, home alone on a Friday night, and for the first time in human memory, lonely.
Crying about it to the echoless vastness of the internet.
Even chocolate gets to be too much after you've gorged on enough of it.
I'll still tend to be in the "Loneliness is GOOD" camp... by nature and habit.
Yeah, I've said that.
Is it a girl thing to THINK she wants to be alone?
I've heard so women complain about their husbands being clingy and needy and wanting to do life arm-in-arm, and they have to do some clever shaking to dislodge him without wounding him.
I've only seldom heard a guy whine that he can't get his girl to stop following him around trying to join him in everything he does.
The guy complaint goes, "But she just wants to go off and do her own thing."
In the wonderful book His Needs, Her Needs, it's pointed out that most men have certain emotional needs, and so do most women, but these needs are different. If each person is generous and loving they will try to fulfill their mate's needs but unfortunately they try to supply the things that they themselves would want. Which usually only annoys the recipient, who didn't need that.
I noticed one of the big needs for men was "recreational companionship" which does not appear on the women's list. Men want to go bowling, hunting and camping WITH their mate, but it's such a strong underlying need that they'll also do the most boring, lame female activities as long as it can be WITH her.
Back to Eve.
Did you ever think about why Adam ate the fruit?
It says Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't. That means his sin was worse-- got it.
But if he wasn't deceived, then WHY did he do it? Did he even want to?
Eve wasn't the dumb one of the pair. She had a very thoughtful, scientific decision-making
process:
"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise..."
She was deceived, but not passively-- she gave the idea some thought, and after consideration, decided to go for it. Note how confident she was, making her decisions alone.
She must've been attracted by the idea of being wise and powerful.
She was either confident that Adam would join her in her new rank, or simply didn't care. Maybe togetherness just wasn't very high on her list of priorities.
Why was our little scaly buddy after Eve in the first place?
Was it really, as I've heard so many times, because Eve was weak in the head and Adam was the stronger?
Or was it because Eve was the independent one, who would make the decision while she was all alone.
I'll bet you that if Adam had been tempted, he would have gone running to the woman, "Hey honey, listen to this, doesn't this sound like a great idea?"
And then Eve would have talked him out of it, because there's nothing with a spine of iron like a woman who thinks she has a more righteous position than her husband, hahaha.
In any case, if they had been together, they would have been unbreakable.
"She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."
Poor Adam's downfall consists of only two words, "He ate."
Just the action. No thoughts. He's the one who sounds stupid, although Paul said somewhere that Adam was the one who knew better.
Why did he do it?
Maybe he just didn't want to be alone again. He knew what it was like to be alone, and the urge to be together overshadowed all other considerations. He wanted the woman so much that, if she had to be thrown out of paradise to suffer trouble and mortality, he wanted to go with her.
Check the posture. Yep, looks about right. That woman's confidence is GONE and it ain't coming back.
Suddenly she appreciates that arm.
I've sometimes thought about our part of the curse, "desire shall be for thy husband and he shall rule over thee." It's been explained all kinds of different ways that didn't make much sense to me. Having a libido isn't exactly a curse, and "he shall rule over thee" can't be a bad thing after it just stated that she wants him to.
I can think of few women who REALLY have confidence in themselves.
Maybe that's where it went :-(
We abused our independence, so it got taken away.
I think the curse was, "After this, nothing will ever feel okay again unless there's somebody around to tell you that it's okay."
