Or maybe I have bad breath.

Intensity. I have a lot of it, and I do not know how to turn it off.

Intensity makes it difficult for me to be fake. People are often attracted to my sincerity, but if they come close enough they are also frequently overwhelmed by me.

I desire intensely to be a good friend, and a friend of the good. I want to help my friends grow into the people they are meant to become. This desire is good, but because of it sometimes I forget to simply enjoy them.

I can be perhaps overly anxious to do right by my friendships and relationships. When something seems or feels wrong, I want to drop everything, hit the mat and hash it out until it is right. Often people just want a little space. Clearly this doesn't work very well, and many friends have essentially run away without explanation. When this happens, I am left bewildered and feeling doomed to single-handedly ruin all my relationships, even though I am putting so much effort and stress into making them work.

I do not have to try to be intense. I am intense. I cannot figure out how to stop without losing my very identity.

What IS my identity? Does intensity belong there?

And here's the rub: what if intensity is not in my identity in Christ?
And the other rub: what if it is?
And the irony: it is pretty intense to worry this much about being intense. :0)

Was Jesus intense?
Actually, I think so. It takes a lot of passion and intensity to stick to your guns the way He always did. Sometimes that did alienate people-- there are people that left when they realized what He was really about. The difference is that I also think that He knew when and how to chill out. I think He was very good at enjoying people, because people loved to party with Him.

I hope someday to work out that balance-- to be able to both be willing to die for those I love and to simply delight in them during our time together. To love without holding too tightly or applying pressure. To love without worrying that, any second now, they will run away and I'll never know why.