Be longing ... and Martian Child

Weird.

It's an odd word, isn't it?

To be honest, I think we're all just a little bit weird ... in some way or another. Maybe maturity comes when you realize your own quirkiness or try to embrace what makes you uniquely you..

But the funny thing is, I think most of us don't want to think of ourselves as weird. We just want to fit in--to belong.

Tonight I saw the movie Martian Child. I had wanted to see the new Steve Carrell flick instead (I love "The Office"!) ... but apparently, so did everybody else. So I ended up spending the evening with John Cusack and a quirky kid who thinks he's actually from Mars. It was kind of a sappy movie, but it made me think about the oddity of all of us and the basic human desire to love and belong.

(Yes, one of my odd quirks is my analytical mind, so I'll let you in on a little bit of what I thought about as I watched this movie...without giving the plot away, of course!)

In my life (so far), I've had the opportunity to actually get to know people leading all kinds of different lives ... multi-millionaires, people from trailor parks, models, beauty queens, geniuses, jocks, punks ... you name it. And no matter where they come from, what they have or what they look like, they are all wanting to belong.

On the outside, some of these people can look like they've got it all together--but when taken to extremes, their desire to belong can drive them to buy things they can't afford, take up hobbies they don't actually enjoy or spend time with certain people simply because it can help them maneuver their way toward power or belonging to a specific social circle.

And then there are those on the other side of the spectrum who have embraced their oddity so much so that it has become a self-protective mechanism for keeping others away. Their "secret" is that they actually care what people think--they actually do want to belong. Like the Martian Child in the movie, they just might have a hard time trusting people to actually love and accept them.

I can't help but wonder what God thinks as He looks at all of us people trying to belong. I bet He would tell us something like, "Be longing ... for Me, for what I've called you to be, for community with others. That's what I created you for."

Hmm ... so maybe I'll make that my mantra for the week--to be longing, not just trying to belong.