Chatting away...

I've been sick since Tuesday... nothing serious, just a dull ache in my stomach and nausea. Nowhere near as bad as some friends of mine, but still annoying. Fortunately, nothing pressing is on my plate, so I have been kind of a slacker this week.

Sickness lead to boredom, which this week, lead to chat.

I got on chat for the first time in over 8 years (when chat first started). My how it has changed. First, there are a lot of hormones out there. The room names are the first hint: "married and lonely," "30 and Flirty," etc. It's actually pretty sad. The "funny" thing is that the rooms have a description... and it usually is something like, "Come on in, the beer is cold and the food is plentiful..." as if it was an actual room... a real party (as opposed to a bunch of 14 year old boys trying to talk dirty to girls.)

So I picked my name..."Paul" (I'm not very creative) and signed on.

"Fresh meat!" the room cries. Suddenly a bunch of people are PMing me, "a/s/l" (age, sex, location).

First, why would I start a conversation with someone demanding my age, sex and location? It really is none of their business. It just seems rude; abrupt. So I just didn't respond. I watched the room and found a couple of people who seemed, "normal." (Meaning every word wasn't a sexual innuendo and their name wasn't something like, "Born_to_bone."*

Finally, I met a couple of people who were okay with just talking: Rob and Dixie. Rob and I talked about Grisham novels, Drum Corps and our families. Dixie and I talked about our families --we both are the same age, happily married, have one daughter (22 months old), and both waited late in life to start having kids. We actually spent some time talking about why the heck we were chatting at midnight (I had slept during the day and was not tired- it was only 11 for her... she was out West).

And we talked about God (I was inspired by "The Big Kahuna"). We talked about pain, and fear, and raising a child, and being a good spouse. And does God care about those things? ("Yes, I tell her.") She went to church as a child but does not remember anything about God or Jesus or the bible. She really doesn't think of spiritual things. She just goes on with her life.

But for someone who doesn't think of spiritual things, she sure did ask a lot of questions...

At then end of my chat with Dixie, she said how refreshing it was to talk with me. She said she hadn't talked with someone like this in a long time. She said she felt, "more alive" after talking with me.

That made me really sad.

Because, in fact, it was just another conversation for me. I have conversations like this pretty much every day of my life.

But maybe most people don't. Maybe most people are so far removed from people who talk about anything deeper than their work and the weather (or cyber sex)...

I think we all long for deeper things. I have always held a deep conviction that most people want to talk about the deep things of life. And the longer I live, the more that is lived out in my experience. I have found that people love to talk about God... and struggle... and relationships...and pain. And they love to be prayed for... even if it is over chat.

I challenge my readers to go beneath the surface. Not just with strangers, but with your friends. Find out how they are really doing. What they are struggling with. How it is with their family?

How is it with their soul...

It's too bad we spend so much time talking about industrial lubricant.





*I was inspired to get on chat because of a Dave Barry column. That was the name of one of his characters.