Get Out Of My Comfort Zone!

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.  For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.  But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up.
Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10

My friend David is always good for reminding me of this, and I am blessed for it.  "Get out of your comfort zone!" he'll tell me.  By this, he usually means that I need to get out there and meet people.   See, in my "comfort zone" I'm perfectly fine to just be by myself and deal with life as it comes.  That's fine for someone who is a hermit stuck in the back woods of Duck Dynasty, but not so good for someone who wants companionship or, in my case, marriage at some point.  Yeah, being a loner can be a deal breaker to both of those situations.   I envy those that can easily engage people they come across in daily life, David is one of those people.  I'm not sure how it began, but I think I've always been pretty overly shy, until recently.  With the help of David and a few other friends, I've learned to get out of my shell and engage other people.  However, it's a "Baby step" process and my work continues.  Not many people can relate to a situation where someone is literaly paralyzed with fear when faced with interacting with other people, but that's how I was for a LONG time.  I cringe at the thought that I have something of a social disorder, who needs more problems in their life?  No, I think I can trace most of these fears back to when I was growing up.  Raised in a single parent household, I was sheltered for the most part.  Sure, I had my friends that I spent a good deal of time with, but other than that I was a loner in sorts.  Now, I COULD have reached out and broken out of this at any point in my life, but I didn't.   Therefore, it wasn't the Government, aliens, Al Gore or any other lame excuse that kept me from getting out of my comfort zone, it was ME!  For the most part, I was never forced to break out of the comfort zone that I had created for myself.  Add to that some huge self confidence issues and it was better for me to stay within comfort zone than to reach out to others.  See, as you may have noticed, people can be a cruel lot and say hurtful things.  By avoiding interaction with others, I would avoid the pain inflicted by their words, but I also avoided that opportunity of creating more friendships.  Who knows how many good relationships I could have developed.  The funny thing is, by avoiding others, I was exhibiting the very same behavior to others that I feared they would do to me.  Kind of like I was my own worst enemy huh?  Did avoiding others save me from the pain inflicted by other people as I had hoped?  Nope.  I know that God does not want us to avoid relationships with others, there's plenty of scripture to back that up.  With the help of my good friends David, Dennis, Kevin and Chuck, all Godly men, I've started to break out of that isolation.  Slowly but surely, the shell is breaking.

~Scott~