Clique

My freshman year at Mississippi State University was spent in survival mode.  I was enrolled as an architecture student, and each of us had been told to expect failure amongst our peers.  In fact, I can now say that most of us first year students were in survival mode.  It was daunting, and at times, really frightening.

At the same time, I was living in the dorm with a stranger who was terribly homesick.  Though he was much more outgoing and friendly than I was, he missed his family to the point of traveling home at every opportunity which in turn left me back in Starkville all alone.

Education was my second choice as a major, and by the time I'd reached the end of my freshmen year in Architecture, I was ready to bail.  I remember meeting with the Associate Dean about this, and he advised me to stick it out for one more semester.

A few weeks into my sophomore year, I was approached one Sunday afternoon while working at my drawing board by a fellow architecture student about sharing a meal at a local eatery with he and his friends.  I asked who exactly would be going, and all of the guys he listed I knew of simply by seeing them and their work within Design Studio (the primary architecture school class).

So, I had a choice to make.  Stay put at my desk or take a risk and join them for dinner on this fateful Sunday evening.

I'm sure glad I went with them.

In high school, I was always the boy in the background, making a point to be as invisible as possible.  I never felt all that comfortable in my own skin, but especially in high school.  Thankfully, Architecture School was somewhat different in this regard, but I had the previous years of existing socially incognito that had been ingrained in my way of living out my life.

At the restaurant (pizza), after we ordered our food, I sat down amongst 6 or 7 guys, and the one who'd personally invited me then proceeded to immediately take me through his newly developed initiation trope.  It was hilariously ridiculous and by the end, we were all laughing hysterically at this guy's good humor.  And by now, I was elated to be there, feeling welcomed and comfortable.

For years after this, our group ate pizza together on Sunday nights at this same restaurant.  We even named our clique, but I can't remember what we came up with.  These young men and all of the friendships that grew out of that group enabled me to move out of survival mode as a college student.

This was my first real taste of relational accountability, and it was heavenly.

The Blog That Rescued Me

Back in 2013, I found myself unsuccessful regarding locating any semblance of authentic community.  We were living in small town Mississippi where I'd taken a job.  Having left behind a handful of brotherly friendships that had subsequently whet my appetite here in Jackson, I was hopeful that God would lead me, despite our now rural circumstances, to relationships that might similarly invoke relational accountability.

Self-destructive behaviors / thought patterns ensued as I found myself feeling more and more isolated.  Eventually, it was my personal blog that served as a catalyst for my employer to start asking hard questions of me.

This personal blog was nonetheless a public journal which detailed my story post after post after post.  Hence, it had been reflecting the deep seated sense of isolation I was experiencing, and from there, served as a white flag for those who eventually took notice.

I began attending meetings of the Samson Society +/-1 year later in 2014.  Mr. Don Waller had initiated a group at First Baptist Church Jackson that had existed for about a year, and these men welcomed me with open arms.  Overnight, I now had a lifeboat, and I felt as if I could stop swimming out in the open water.

I had formally resigned my position which felt as if I had been the problem all along, but in reality it was the isolation that had made my situation unworkable for me.

Of all the fallout from that experience, the most heartbreaking anecdote had to do with our pastor.  Early on whilst settling into our new small town home, I made a point to reach out to him with my story (via my former blog), and then even six months beyond that, I asked specifically for counsel relative to my sense of isolation.  Despite my efforts, he chose not to respond which only served to darken my situation further.

One of my mantras has always been "Communication is a Key to Success".  Would it not have been for my former blog, I don't know how I would have managed to continue to tread water much farther into my family's future there within that lonely scenario.