Joy Suckers

“Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others . . . who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.”

"Travels with Charley," John Steinbeck

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It's interesting... I think a lot of people know this. Maybe all of us can point to people to people that, when we get around them, they are joy/energy vortexes. There is just a heaviness in the room when they walk in.

I have often wondered if it is a personality characteristic? Does everyone feel it with that person? Are there people immune to their joy sucking? Or, as I suspect is the case, have these people just been so badly wounded (and never did the "work" of healing) that they take all the good/positive/healing/joyful energy from the room in order to heal their hurt which they will never heal because they don't really want it healed. (All of that sounded a bit more new age than I mean it to... but you get what I mean.)

I'm amazed by the presence of "joy suckers" in my life. I'm amazing by "joy suckers" in the church. In the same vein, don't you love those people who just seem to give life and health and joy? You get around them and you just feel more alive. You feel safe. Protected. Challenged. Encouraged.

Then I ask myself... "Okay, which person am I?" And, is my self perception correct? What would my staff say? What would my wife say? What would my friends say? What would my "enemies" say?

Which person are you?

Is this something God can change? (I suspect... but just asking).

How do you... how do I... deal with joy suckers? How do we make sure we are not one of them?

Hear that sound?

That is the sound of the proverbial can of worms being opened. And here I stand with my can opener.

So I have bad feelings about this.

No matter what your view on the practice of homosexuality, I'm not sure this is a biblical solution.