Faith | Fiction | Relationships

Someone Is Waiting for Me

Solace

I awaken with my head on a pillow I think is mine.  The bed is made underneath me as if I have taken a nap.  My hands sweep over the top of the comforter as I support myself into a seated position.  My muscles are relaxed, and my face holds no tension.  

My eyes wander over at the loft’s edge where the adjacent windows frame white in the adjoining room, and I hear purposeful, small sounds just below me. 

Someone is waiting for me.  Was I only napping, or have I been sleeping here for a while?   

I ascertain someone has been waiting for me. Someone has been waiting for me, and I am not jolted to hurry down because this person never intended to leave.  This person understood the importance of my rest.  I grin hearing the small sounds of someone who has a purpose outside of me and the patience to wait. 

My hand sleeves the banister as I descend the stairwell. Each foot fall is met with need of comfort, protection, security, and warmth, much like a young girl would expect in a home of kind, loving parents.    

As I reach the main level, I turn the corner toward the tinkerings, expecting you to be there.  

At this moment, we do not touch, but it’s not because there is a lack of affection.  Our affection goes beyond that.  It is understood, believed, and embraced in each shared smile, glance, and gesture of care to this home, even in the mundane tasks. It is felt in every sound and pause.        

You wait for me to come on my own time, when I am ready, and I love you for this because you trust and carry peace within yourself, the kind that is contagious.  It’s an aura that fills this house. There is no waiting for the next thing as the world competes in everything.  It is just a neutral state of being.  Not that everything is perfect in our world but nothing outside of us is running us or our lives.  We understand the importance of others in our life and their place in it, but nothing and no one is getting between us.  There is no fear of this in the future either. It’s the actualization of total rest, and there is no fear of what’s to come because we realize it’s not momentary rest. It’s inner rest, undisturbed and untainted by any forces known and unknown. It’s the absolute state of knowing and feeling that everything is exactly as it is and will be.  There is nothing in mind, spirit, or soul that muddles it.    

This peace transcends all understanding.  There is no overthinking–overexplaining– because much is understood between us without the use of words. Though our conversations may deal more in the day to day facts of life, there is a lot of understood emotion by observation, much like holding a kaleidoscope for eye’s catch of all colors, shades, and facets of slight changes in tone and grimaces on one’s face, and even in one’s stillness.  We know each other as if we have known each other, our souls holding memory.  

I wonder if it has always been like this with you.  Regardless of having a definite answer, it doesn’t matter. If in your gentleness, even your kindness, I have attacked you with my words or rejected your acts of love toward me, you have not held it against me.  You understand it was only fear, not hate, that held me back. And I hold space in the same way for you.  We hold no record of wrongs against each other.  The world has been harsh to both of us, and we both understand this about the other.  Our nurturing love breathes life into our places where there have been little deaths: You’ll know the weight of my deferred dreams, and I’ll know how to find you when you want to hide from the world.  This is love, and we’ll never need convincing nor the shoeing away of doubts because we’ll never question if we deserve it or are worthy of it. 

One man’s “I just wanted to make you happy” is that man’s own folly!  Maybe in my 20’s that might have been a viable assumption.  No, no sir! I was never looking for someone to make me happy.  After all these years, I know how to do that on my own.  I know what God has for me cannot be done alone.  To be with someone means I have to find something greater in and of myself, something more useful to this world: Solace. With that, I am healed, and in my healing, I can heal the world.    

To my future love: 

I need a slow yet ever-burning, passionate love that develops with time and space and presence. If it is forced or too fast, I won’t believe it is genuine.  Even though all that would be nice, this will be my reality. When you find me, I may not be all that you envisioned.  Be patient with me and listen to the words I say because I don’t speak idle words when it comes to love.  Give me time– give us reasonable time– until we become one.  It will be worth the wait.  I will be your love of a lifetime, I promise; I know this because I know what I feel in my heart.  I may not be able to articulate my emotions fully in the moments as they come, but you will know it more readily in my touch, my kiss, my embrace, my vulnerability, and even in my anger lest I lose you.  I will know you are the one when you consider my wishes and warnings– when you believe in me.

Thank you ahead of time for loving me well, just like Him. 

With deep appreciation and love,  

Melanie 

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Faith | Relationships

Know Your History

Conflict and relationships

“The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settles the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, MSG)

 

Last time in “Our Struggle is Not Against Flesh and Blood,” I focused on how the enemy weasels into our life and how to reinforce change against similar, future attacks.  In this next blog, I will address how the Holy Spirit reveals our own heart to us in our battles with the enemy, along with any unhealthy patterns we have cultivated into our lives that might have given the enemy a foothold.  

 

When our world starts to fall apart, it doesn’t usually take us long to soul- search for its roots of cause and effect. With the past dating relationship I shared about in my last blog, there was conflict and loss, but these kind of experiences are not at the expensive of just waste and pain. They can reveal so much about ourselves and the relationships in our life.  

I admit I had a very hard time writing this third section of my blog. Becoming frustrated in the process, I stopped writing the piece and went back to journaling.  I had to make sense of it and get to the bottom of the heart-issues: Where am I with the issues in my current relationships, and do I truly have it sorted out? What am I responsible for?  With others, what should I look for next time so that the outcome is different?  Otherwise, if I am having a hard time naming it, I cannot change it (MacDonald 67).  Since I recently finished reading Gordon MacDonald’s book Rebuilding Your Broken World, I will be using only the titles to two of his main/sub-points, focusing on what I feel is most important in learning from the broken parts of our world: know your history and know yourself as a sinner (This second point will be addressed in my next blog titled “Continually Redeemed”).  

Know your history.  Have you ever tried to unlearn something that you had learned the wrong way?  We all have. For a lot of us, this may stem all the way back to our childhood where certain attitudes, habits, and behaviors were modeled for us.  For me, my family history of passive-aggressive behaviors that I learned as a child, especially when dealing with conflict in relationships, was not working for me.  Passive-aggressive in my family looks something like this when two are at odds with one another: No one likes to communicate about the conflict at hand. It is easier for everyone to act like nothing ever happened.  We will be cordial with each other when we have get-togethers, but deep down, none of us are really moving on. Rather, we are holding on to the hurts and pain caused by each other in the past, so naturally we don’t healthily work through our conflicts.  Over time, a wedge builds in our hearts toward each other. Consequently, the relationship is tested and overcomes the adversity, or worse, holding onto the offense becomes more important than the relationship. If it’s the latter, bonds are destroyed, and the relationship becomes nonexistent.  

I recognized these same passive-aggressive tendencies in myself.  I would go a long time before saying anything if I was upset about something or with someone.  Next, I would allow frustration to build up in me if similar conflicts continued. Instead of conversing about things as they happened, I held things in and acted like everything was okay; eventually the frustration came out in ways that did not foster a healthy relationship.  I would eventually confront the person about something on a much smaller scale they had done recently that aggravated me rather than tackle the real problem. With some, I would just simply spend less time with them.

I knew things had to change. I needed to be true to myself and true to the other person if I wanted a firm foundation in those relationships that were important to me.  This verse displays pure honesty where our words and actions should align:

“But above all, my fellow believers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but let your yes be [a truthful] yes, and your no be [a truthful] no, so that you may not fall under judgment” (James 5:12, AMP). 

No wonder the blow ups or blow outs would come when I handled conflict with others in a passive-aggressive way. I had presented to the other person a facade that everything was okay when it really wasn’t. This is nothing less of being superficial with ourselves, others, and in our relationships:  

“And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you]” (Romans 12:2, AMP).

Being real in our relationships with each other takes spiritual maturity with a whole new infrastructure of values and ethics that are usually in opposition to our learned, worldly ways.  This transformation teeters on whether we will forfeit or embrace God’s best for our life of what He intended for us. Being a Christian means moving forward into God’s ordained design for our new spiritual life in Him:  

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings new life]” (2 Corinthians 5:17, AMP).   

Look at this version of the verse as it includes, with our new life, how it should affect our relationship with others:

“The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settles the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other” (2 Corinthians 5:17, MSG).

Being a new creation in Him and not conforming any longer to the ways of the world means we change the way that we do our relationships and the way that we think about our relationships with each other.  This change can be hard though because we are more familiar with the “old way of doing things,” those patterns fabricated and habits developed into our relationships, that any change that might bring uneasiness and uncertainty would be better off avoided.  It involves the two accepting, adjusting, and confronting the problems at hand, and rarely are two people on the same page at the same time about issues.  That’s why it’s called conflict. As long as we are in relationships on this earth, conflict is inevitable. Talking about issues you are having with another person is scary. It involves confrontation, and it involves the awkward awareness and realization of self in relation to each other. Satan’s threats entered here for me when I moved in a progressive direction for change in my relationships:   

If you “shine a light” on the weaker parts of the relationship, the other person will be offended and feel like you are finding fault in them.  (Yes, this has happened to me!)

If you confront these problems in the relationship, you will lose them.  (Yes, this has happened to me!)   

No matter how you present it or what you say, you will be misunderstood. (Yes, this has happened to me!)   

If you bring up the past, they will accuse you as someone who is holding onto offense and label you as “unforgiving”. (Yes, this has happened to me!)

They won’t see it as communication but as an aggravation of the situation, seeing you as one who causes drama. (Yes, this has happened to me!)   

In my relationships that needed some type of mending or revamping, all of the threats of Satan that preyed on my fears as the possible outcome did happen to me in some way, form, or fashion. Some welcomed the boundaries and borders; some were flustered by the confrontation of making things better.  Nonetheless, once this “clean sweep” took place, what seemed like a lot of uncertainty in the outcome of these relationships was exactly what I needed. In confronting the issues in myself and in my relationships, I gained peace in understanding the relationships better; I gained respect for who I was in Christ as an instrumental part of the growth in my relationships; and I gained new and healthy relationships, beginning wiser with truthful yes’s and truthful no’s.    

Instead of being locked into my history of how I handle others, and as a new creation in Him, I look to the Scriptures to point me in the direction I hope to follow in my relationships (Matthew 5:23-24; Romans 12:17-21; Proverbs 19:11; Ephesians 4:31-32; Colossians 3:12-14; and Matthew 18:15, etc., NIV).  It takes careful obedience on my part to follow His instructions for me in His Word, and it takes godly wisdom to confront issues in relationships. Relying on God’s wisdom, I am thankful that all I have to do is ask Him for it! (James 1:5, NIV).

 

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash