A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Kelly Sedinger

This one’s more serious in tone than usual, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Roger had an unfortunate experience in a place he has naturally seen as something of a sanctuary. How do you deal with things like this — either this type of situation, or in more generic terms, a situation in which something or someplace you see in a certain peaceful way is violated?

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4 Responses to A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

  1. SamuraiFrog says:
    July 30, 2014 at 3:38 pm

    I'm agoraphobic, so my sanctuary is my apartment. Two weeks ago, a young man came to my door doing that magazine-subscription-for-points thing, and his presence felt invasive. He put his foot in the door and was commenting on my things in a way that felt aggressive to me. I felt like I'd done something wrong opening the door, and it took me a few days before I was able to leave the home. But I still feel trapped inside, like I just don't want to go out because I'll come home and find we've been robbed or something.

    So I'm not actually sure how to deal with something like that. I feel like the peace of my home was invaded, and I was already agoraphobic, so this is a big one.

    Anxiety disorder is so often responding to the feeling of fear and getting caught up in that, and I notice I'm still not back to any of the routine I had been able to establish.

  2. Annehueser says:
    July 30, 2014 at 6:54 pm

    I left a comment on the other blog about my handling of a somewhat similar episode. Basically I followed up with the person whose actions made me feel unsafe and let the person know that I would do whatever I needed to do to regain my feeling of safety in that place. But it was hard and took a while.

  3. Roger Owen Green says:
    July 30, 2014 at 7:48 pm

    Ultimately, this is what is going to happen, since I see him in church, and nothing is going to change. And I don't want to be the cause of some weird seating adjustment. I've enlisted a church friend of mine who deals in conflict resolution to contact him to let him know there is an issue between us – my sense is that he may be oblivious to that, though I mailed the blog post to him (no response) and see his response.

  4. the author says:
    July 31, 2014 at 9:29 am

    I attended a six-week evening Bible study course at our church with my mom when she visited us one winter as I thought it would be quality time we could spend together, and discussing our understanding of the Scriptures with other people of faith is always enlightening. Our pastor was the instructor and he's a great teacher, too.

    About halfway through the first class one of the gentleman disagreed with with our pastor on some minor point, and then launched into listing all these things that were "wrong" with the Bible, which deteriorated into a bigoted rant. Several people (me included) asked him to stop but he ignored us.

    The pastor also tried to talk to him and calm him down but he wouldn't stop. By the time this man got to what he thought God should do to all the people he hated he was on his feet and shouting.

    Our pastor finally shouted back at him (mainly to be heard) and the man finally sat down and shut up. From there the pastor tried to continue with the class but the night was pretty much ruined. Mom was so upset she was up half the night with a tension headache.

    We continued going to the class for the rest of the course; Mom is far more forgiving than me and insisted we not let this ruin our studies. That angry bigot also attended every time, though, and I simply could not focus. He never went into another rant but it was like having a rattlesnake in the room.

    I did my best to forgive him for his anger and his ignorance, but since then I haven't gone back to take any new Bible study classes. Every time I think about it I remember him and how much he upset me and mom, and that shuts me down.

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