We all have one. An Inner-Turtle. Yes, you read that correctly. We all have the tendency to turtle ourselves off from the rest of the world and not want to face, interact with or participate in anything involving others. We walk into the cafeteria and don’t want to sit with anyone, putting our faces in our phones or some homework hoping no one wants to sit with us. Maybe we’re depressed. Maybe we’re tired. Maybe we’re annoyed by a particular person and don’t know how to handle it. Maybe we just don’t like people all that much, except for those we’ve deemed acceptable. Maybe we, like I too often do, have a strong moral inclination to listen to, to help, and to deposit something positive into someone’s life. Too many experiences of getting rejected, misunderstood, or having people stare blankly and change the subject when sharing my passion for them and their good leave me feeling scalded, desiring to shrink into my turtle hole to avoid the “failure” that so often is talking to people. No matter what our thought process is, so many of us don’t want to engage with people on a shockingly large scale. I say shockingly because we too are people. We want friendship, good experiences, and to be stimulated by human contact as much as the next person. But in a strange negative feedback loop that we’ve internalized talking to people = ________. Failure, embarrassment, misunderstanding; you fill in the blank.

But this turtle shell inside me is deeper than I ever could have imagined. Despite the hurdling of the barrier that is even talking to people for me, and getting quite good at it, I found that it is very easy to bring your head out of the turtle shell just enough to give a smile and “hello” and some cursory small talk. This is by far more dangerous than being staunchly holed up in your shell. Then you stick out; then you are obvious and people tend to reach out. Being a face in the breach is a much more dangerous because people tend to like that face, and it seems pretty normal. Being just out enough to see the sun deceives people, normal things keep happening, work gets done, classes get attended, your face still shows up at small group, meetings don’t go by without you there and you even contribute. You have flashes of yourself, but you aren’t quite yourself. This can be very hard to detect. It takes listening, humility, and love. But it also takes work on the part of the would-be-turtle to speak the truth about themselves. Recently, I’ve been holding my face in the sun. It’s been a period of extreme “busyness.” I’ve neglected the only reason most of my busyness exists at all, the reason I exist at all; to know, see, hear, love and follow God with everything in me. I had been working so much that I neglected the apparently ordinary but supernatural gift of God in His word and in having His ear tuned to me. I took these things for granted. The result was the motivator of a severe lack of confidence, which is really a lack of faith. It was showing in the way I carried myself, the way I spoke to people, and the way I showed up. It took me opening up to a close friend, and another close friend calling me out.

Both of these men are members of my church and they being the church exactly as it was intended. One heard some things that were not lining up and that needing correcting and advising despite that fact that he wanted to sleep (it was very late at night). The other saw some things that didn’t quite look good and he took me aside and conversed with me. Both did so in love, did so with a great deal of listening and empathy, and both showed me that they too had been through periods just like mine and understood my issues. At the end of the day, whatever our turtle-trigger, whatever is keeping us there, it seems to me that it is discouragement. When I’m not immersed in God’s word, when I’m not getting into His presence in prayer, and when I just go to church and sit like a knot on a log and don’t really invest or get invested into by anyone, I lack confidence because I lack encouragement. I think it’s pointless, I think the anxious thoughts that swirl around in my head are right, I think the pessimism and fearfulness of the world to be internalized. I think this is what’s behind the constant scriptural mandate to encourage one another. Because it’s so very easy to forget what’s most important, leave off of those things in favor of more imminently “practical” things, and thus chip away at your own foundation causing you to lose faith and lack courage and confidence. I am literally going to be and am eternally grateful for my brothers, and their teaching me how easy it is to get distracted and what it means to be (in the process of being) brought back.