an old myspace blog that still rings true, still humbles me and makes me examine my life and interactions daily…
To love completely and give of myself completely and not be jaded by the outcome. To not be hardened by the pain of the past, present, future. To remember all the hurt as well as the joy. To learn and grow from every experience. To remember. To not push the pain away or to ignore it. To stay vulnerable and open when the only way I ever learned to handle it in the past was through my own strength and resolution. I do not, cannot rely on my own strength…Before I knew anything of the personal love and compassion of God I relied on myself to get me through really hard times. I never wanted to, I always wanted someone to take care of me. Tell me it would be alright. Treat me gently and protect me. But that never became a full reality in a person. I learned to quickly put things behind me, move on and ultimately forget completely the pain that life brings. The hurt was still there, I was just not aware, not conscious of it. If you continually cover up deep wounds over and over, whether out of necessity or ignorance or anything, you become calloused. Jaded. Hardened. I learned to turn my emotions off. I could/can still love, but can detach myself from people, emotions, painful situations. It is getting harder to do; I am being healed.
I’ll take my mother for example… I had to learn to detach myself from her in order to stay safe, to not be hurt by her words, actions, emotions. In the process I had allowed myself to treat her like I would never allow myself to treat another person on this planet. Not physically or verbally mean. But the way I treated her in my heart, I had lost hope. I did not give her credit or acknowledge her struggles. I looked on her with pity and sadness. I rolled my eyes and was uncomfortable around her… a while ago I was reading about how loneliness is the greatest form of poverty . To feel unloved, unwanted and uncared for is the worst of human sorrows. I was so humbled. This woman, who is also my mother, is the loneliest person I know. She feels shunned and neglected by her family, and she is… I went to be with her for her birthday last week and saw her in a completely different light. I listened to her, talked with her, told her of His love and presence and grace and desire for her. This is all stuff I have talked with her about before, but there was a change within. I wasn’t doing it because I felt obligated or like I should. I saw her as I would see any other hurting, lonely person: with compassion and love and the right to those things and so much more. How could I have come to the point where I had been able to live my life so ignorant of her real suffering? I had become hardened. Years of being hurt, used and made a fool over and over by her, I had built up so many layers of protection. Numbed to her eventually. People told me to distance myself from her. Therapists told me. I told myself I had to. It was the only way I saw of how to deal with all the hurt she dished out. She was the one person in the world I allowed myself to keep from my heart. To let someone into your heart risks being hurt by them. To allow her back in meant allowing her to hurt me again.
And that is what I want. I do not desire to be hurt. But I desire to be open and vulnerable and loving as I can. To every person, in every instance. We are taught to protect ourselves, to put our needs first. But we who have the answers, and the source of all renewing and Love, we must give fully of ourselves: until it hurts. I want to be drained and used and broken hearted, because then He is able to come in and fill up and renew and heal. And it is so beautiful. It is not an easy life, in fact it guarantees a lot of heart ache/ sadness. But we who have the answers need to be first on the line to risk losing, because we have already won. Who am I to keep my love and life from my mother? I let her back in and listened to her and she said she had never felt such peace, and love and compassion in her life. Not from or by me, but through me. I talked with her today and she thanked me again. She says she felt God, feels Him but is still scared. I do not know the choices she will make, but I know that the moment I acknowledged what I was doing, humbled myself and laid my heart on the table to be hurt again is when His love came flowing and pouring out on me and through me.
Who in our lives have we allowed our hearts to be hardened towards? Who do we know who are the loneliest people? How about the socially awkward ones, the people who aren’t always fun or chill to hangout with? Our grandparents alone in their homes, the quiet roommate that we never really bother to see what’s wrong, the aunt that no one talks to. It’s not like they are ignorant of their situation, they feel that aloneness, that isolation, that sorrow. There is so much poverty around us, poverty of the heart and spirit, people walking around feeling alone. unloved. Unwanted. We don’t need to travel abroad to find poverty or ways to be used. Start in our houses, our families, our friends and we will find such a need. It is harder to reach out to these people, it is much more comfortable to reach out to strangers in many ways. But this is where it begins, where the world starts getting changed.
I have so much to learn. I still have so many layers built up. But by Love they are being exposed and torn down. I must desire this, seek it and strive for it though, it does not come with out that. I desire to be so open, so willingly to lay my heart out, so ready for it to be broken again. But the only way I can do this is to be fully in His presence and peace because I will perish if I try and live that life by my own strength. I want to live this life so fully and completely, all the good with all the hurt. I do not want to be numb from years of pain and self protection. I want to be used, to be broken, to be made a fool in most eyes, but I need You to restore me. Always.
