I do not know Luke, but reading his posting below makes me feel so connected to him.He is a Harding student participating in the Harding In Zambia program this semester. Luke writes of struggling with introversion and great doubts of why God chose him to experience this 'once in a life time' adventure. I greatly appreciate his honesty and transparency. I think the majority of us feel overwhelmed at times when we consider how and why God would use us, consider us, even desire us in His Kingdom. I hope I get to meet Luke when I visit the Harding campus later in the year. He speaks my language.
Nora
Reflections in the Glass
by Luke Larsen
I have a tiny shard of glass in my toe. A glass bottle broke in my room nearly a month ago, sending glass everywhere, and three weeks ago as I was running my feet over the rug like the dummy I am, I felt a shooting pain in my left big toe. I knew immediately what I had done, but after massaging my toe ever so gently I was sure that nothing had been left under the skin. I went about my day as normal, but I would occasionally have a sharp pain in that same toe. As any reasonable person would do, I diagnosed myself as having a glass splinter that would not decompose for millions of years securely secured under my skin. I took the necessary steps (e.g., not wearing my Chacos because they irritate my toe, learning to walk with that toe raised off the ground, and not walking barefoot in my room anymore, among other things) to learn to cope with this glass in my toe. Although I’ll occasionally jump and wince when I accidentally rub the toe wrong, I find that I can function almost as well as a Non-glass Toe (as we in the glass-in-toe community call people without glass splinters in their toe).
I also have a glass shard in my brain, in my thoughts, a shard much larger and much more intrusive than any physical glass shard in any toe. Like the splinter in my toe, I have learned to cope with this megashard that permeates every aspect of my life, every social interaction I have, every decision I make. This shard is the shard of doubt, the doubt of myself, of my abilities, and specifically here in the HIZ program it is manifested through my rather severe introversion.1
The glass shard in my head talks to me. It says, “Luke, you’re an introvert in a program designed at its core for extraverts. Why are you here? Why are you robbing a much sought after spot from someone who would use his time much more wisely than you? Why do you take naps several times a week? Why do you sometimes miss out on a great opportunity for outreach by staying back at Namwianga when everyone else leaves?”
In addition, other people talk to me, not directly, but their words speak to me. They say, “Don’t ever miss out on an opportunity to go to the Havens/clinic/outreach/Havens/Havens/Havens. If you feel tired, suck it up. You can sleep when you’re dead. If you don’t feel well, suck it up. You’ll never have an opportunity like this again.” And this feeds my doubt. Deep inside I know that I can’t keep up such a sprint for very long. Yet at the same time I feel guilty whenever I go to my room to read or to nap or just to listen to some music, because I know that I truly am missing out.
However, as guilty as I feel temporarily isolating myself from the group (often at inopportune times) in order to preserve my already worn-thin sanity, it’s the normal introvert response to overwhelming involvement. The fact of the matter is that no matter how hard I try, if I over-involve myself, I will literally have a mental breakdown.
The first question, the question I ask myself daily, “Why are you even here if you can’t handle the pace?” still rings incessantly in my mind. I’m unsure of the answer. In a program so designed around going and going and going and going, in a culture so designed around community and people and being around people and doing things with people and participating in rituals and programs with people, it can certainly feel like there is no place for the introvert in HIZ. But one third of Americans are introverts, and that brings me comfort. Out of the twenty-six HIZers, statistically eight and two-thirds of us are introverts to some extent.
This doubt is what causes me to feel and to ask these things. Being an introvert has nothing to do with it. If there was no doubt in my mind about my place in HIZ, I wouldn’t even think twice about my introversion. Alternatively, if I were an extravert, the doubt would find something else to feed off of. The doubt is simply there and causes me to look for an excuse, a scapegoat, and the lot falls on my introversion, just as it could have fallen on any one of my other traits.
Eventually, hopefully, the glass shard will work its way out of my toe. I’ll be able to wear Chacos again, walk completely normally, and share stories of “a mighty piece of glass that pierced my toe so violently that I feared I would never walk again.” Without the constant reminder of what glass pieces can do to a man, I’ll begin to walk barefoot on the floor of my room once more. When I’m an old battle-worn grandpa, I’ll harken back to the good ole days where walking to and from school uphill both ways with glass shards in my toe was the norm. And eventually, when I’m very old, I’ll forget all about my glass splinter, and my life will be peaceful.
Likewise, the glass shard in my mind, the doubt that tells me I’m somehow not good enough to be used by God, will likely eventually come loose. Here’s the thing: Everyone has a glass shard in their mind, an insecurity of sorts, whether that’s low self-image, pride, lust, overwhelming sorrow, or a multitude of other possibilities. While these are all terrible and can in turn cause questions and other insecurities to arise, they all have the potential to work their way out of one’s life, and in the process of removing the shard from one’s life, lessons and principles and knowledge are gained. Transformation is a real thing. It happens. I’ve seen it happen. We’ve all likely seen it happen.
The glass shard in my mind says one thing, but the mind in which it lives says something else. The shard says, “Don’t put yourself through this program that is obviously ill-fit for you,” but the mind says, “Luke, you is kind; you is smart; you is important. You have a place here; you just can’t quite see it in its entirety yet.” It’s true that right now I don’t see it clearly, but I’m confident it’s there, and I’m always looking for it. Even at HIZ, the introverted doubter, the boastful extravert with low self-worth, and everyone in between have value. I know it.
- For fear of sounding melodramatic or whiny, let me qualify some things. First of all, I will be writing from my perspective because that’s the only perspective I know well enough; I’m not saying that these issues are solely my own. Second, the Western world is designed around extraverts. This is fact. When the West says, “Be outgoing and full of energy” in order to get and secure your position in a good job, in order to participate in all the programs possible at school, in order to easily make friends, the extraverts of the world are ready to meet those challenges, and indeed they’re not really challenges at all if that’s how you get your kicks. The West rarely says, “Take time for you in order to recharge” because how does that benefit the world? How does that progress technology? How does that further relationships? It doesn’t, so it’s often shunned. It’s hard to measure, but allegedly one third of Americans are introverts. One third of Americans are living in a world ill-designed for them. Third, lest anyone think I’m inherently against introversion, I am not and I can’t even imagine being any other way. ↩
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