You’ve seen the Allstate commercials with the crazy guy in a torn suit and grease on his face named Mayhem, right? You wince and watch on while some poor unfortunate soul’s minivan is crushed by Mayhem’s handiwork. #crashandburn #suckstobethatguy Well, there is no insurance package to protect the heart from Mayhem’s destructive ways. Deep relationships require vulnerability and access to our hearts. A heart exposed requires great risk.
When Mayhem comes a calling in our relationships we all react differently. I’ve seen a few people who have decided to self insure or keep their heart in a garage behind lock and key to prevent further damage. However, in the alternative, there’s also the adrenaline junkies who ride the roller coaster of love again and again along - that was me. We are the dare devils who feed on Mayhem taking dumb risks that leave our hearts totaled and us on a stretcher.
FAULTY FOUNDATION
Innately our Creator built us with a blueprint that requires a reinforced foundation of unconditional love. We can take calculated risks in love because our Father’s foundation is already set in stone. Our relationships then build the house and decorate our heart once that foundation is in place. So when something comes in that doesn’t fit on that foundation we recognize it and refuse it. We are able to set healthy boundaries to protect our hearts from people who are trying to build something different. We are responsible for our foundation and teach others what we will and will not allow in our “house.” We don’t have to gamble at the Lucky In Love Casino, risk it all and lose it all for of love. Like banking, it’s a low risk loan because we already have a bazillion in our God’s Love Bank. Instead of worrying about our exposure, we only open our hearts to the investments that we are willing to take a risk on. We might experience a loss, but it will not devastate us because we our bank accounts are filled with God’s love. If this critical foundation is not laid in childhood we have no concrete stability. We were taken from and not given to or forgotten. We are forced to build our lives on the shifting sands and the fickleness of the love of others. Many of us didn’t grow up knowing we were unconditionally loved. If you didn’t have this foundation of unconditional love, you are not alone.
I have these visions of me as an infant in a bed crying for hours on end without getting a response from my teenage mom. My parents didn’t get married until I was almost 2 years old. Don’t condemn my parents for my faulty foundation. I don't. If we judge ourselves or others or live in regret then we are damned to repeat the past because that's where our focus is. I think we all have our parenting #fails. Believe me I’ve got lots of those stories but I’ll save them for another blog. One story in particular comes to mind: I remember it very well. My sweet daughter was a newborn. She had cried for a couple a days straight with her tummy issues and I picked her up and I shook her and yelled “What's wrong with you! Why won’t you stop crying?” Thankfully, I came to my senses and realized that I was losing it. I laid her down in her bed to cry while I drowned it out with my own tears in the shower. As I said, I stay out of condemnation for anyone including myself.
I didn’t have that foundation of unconditional love in childhood so I looked for that from others and maybe you do too? We aren’t okay alone… We look to others to approve of us… to love us unconditionally and be perfect. We try to save others because we want to be saved. We are motivated by fear of rejection and act cray cray when we get in relationships.
Others do the exact opposite, they are fearful in relationships and are too afraid to open their hearts to be known and love. How could we know how to love in a healthy way, if it was not modeled for us? We have to unlearn bad habits and bad boundaries and trust God’s love to show us the way.
I had a season of my life where God tore down what I thought was my foundation of love. He came in like a wrecking ball and scrapped my foundation of love. It’s taken a LONG TIME but now I feel like my foundation is finally being established.
During the breaking, several things happened that were all intended ultimately for my good.
I remember going to the chiropractor. I crossed my arms over my chest as he wrapped his arms around me and made an adjustment on my back. It felt like a hug and I started to cry because I couldn’t remember the last time my husband touched me with affection. When I got in the car, I let my tears loose and admitted to myself and God that something was wrong…very wrong. God showed me as He put the x-rays around my heart on the screen with a grim face. I saw how things were crooked and out of alignment with me being weak. I was so starved for attention and touch at home that I was becoming vulnerable. Was this my husbands fault? Mine? Well, the more I’ve worked through this the more I’ve realized that I had been ignoring what was going on in my heart in my marriage. I was being neglected. My husband had not tended his garden and I had not required him to do the work needed for our marriage to be fruitful. Only one person was participating in the relationship and that was me. I set it up that way by acting powerless and being a coward at communication as things went south…even though the best thing for HIM was to set some boundaries and lovingly maintain our connection. We both needed to make some changes. I began communicating courageously with my husband and not ignoring my heart.
Also during the “wrecking ball" season, God began teaching me through a variety of ways. I was beginning to recognize that I was usually the giver and thought that I was supposed to “kill my flesh” and “die to myself” so I shouldn’t need anything from others. Sounds good but 1/2 truths are really lies. I began realizing from my time with Him and some great teaching that for a relationship to have intimacy BOTH people need to be powerful and be able to give and receive. I had set all of my relationships up on a faulty foundation even my relationship with God! I had only wanted to give to Him and never trusted that I was, in fact, lovable and could receive. Prior to that I had believed that it was selfish to have needs… I mistakenly thought it wasn’t humble to set a boundary, I should just pray for God to change their heart #morelies but that was my foundation and view of love and it left me powerless.
I had a friendship that was especially dear to me. Let’s call this friend Laverne and I’ll pretend to be Shirley:) I have a high value for being genuine…maybe because I was a really good liar pre-Jesus, I have to live in the light now and feel terrible when I don’t. I appreciate genuine people, truth and honesty. Laverne lived truth, walked it, and talked it to the extreme. She wasn’t afraid to express her needs or focus on herself. This friendship brought me a lot of freedom and empowerment of the authenticity I craved. I truly delighted in her.
Laverne and I had a lot in common, the unwillingness to be fake and put on a mask, we were both wounded by other friendships and had experienced similar problems of neglect in our marriage. We vowed that we would not make the same mistakes we had in our past friendships because we both professed a deep desire for honesty and truth. I was ecstatic to have a friend like Laverne who was so direct until I decided to take a chance and be direct and authentic with her.
The week of my birthday she called me with a gift that God had directed her to give me: Laverne committed to praying for me every day and sharing what she heard each day. She said she knew it would be a sacrifice because she was a busy momma. It was like one of those cheesy American Express commercials: a new pair of shoes for my birthday $100, a Louis Vuitton purse $1000, sweet words from God during my Bday week: PRICELESS! No amount of money, no gift, no act of service could have touched my heart so deeply than these kisses she had been directed to deliver. I thanked God for such a friend who would take time out of her busy day to pray and share these priceless daily words from our Father. I knew very well that I could get my own daily kisses from God but this was new…I was allowing someone else to give to me and being vulnerable in that. The first morning, I got my “gift” text delivered promptly from her and I savored it like honey from my King. The next few days were filled with excuses or forgetfulness, random “thinking of you. oh i think i forgot to send you that word but so busy” type texts.
Laverne is a big time “confronter” when there are issues in relationships. She confronted me on several things of which I responded with what I hope was love and my reality… Some things I felt led to adjust by the Holy Spirit after our conversations and sometimes it was more about me listening to her and her being able to express herself. I tend to shy away from confrontations because I’m always thinking that somehow I could do something different, better…shouldering all of the blame. I wanted to pull the old WWJD card and go low, be humble, be wantless and needless but more and more I’m realizing that Jesus is a passionate lover, He’s intimate, He’s jealous, we have the ability to love Him, hurt Him, make commitments, break them, and we grow closer to Him and others as we confess our true feelings and how these things affect us. I’d been taught we were supposed to have abundant grace and it should never run out…which is true but it can also be a set up for being inauthentic and taken advantage of. If someone loves me then they want to know how their behavior affects me. If a person is in our inner circle and don’t allow us to be powerful and recognize that each person’s needs in a relationship are equally important then there is a problem.
The anger exhibited in my house as a child during “confrontations” was explosive so I’ve avoided them until I freaked out and blew up when things went too far. In my experience, being authentic has led not to intimacy but to a disconnect so I only go there when I’m so tired of the BS that I am ready to disconnect. That’s not really a healthy way to handle things to have a good relationship and I felt like Laverne was such a good model of being assertive and truthful.
When I thought about her not following through with her commitment I would think “Oh, it’s no big deal, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care…” but that was a lie and I had started to believe that my needs were important in relationships. I was scared to verbalize that though. In my past, I believed in my heart that my needs really didn’t matter because I didn’t want to make it about me or be selfish. Laverne was extraordinarily good at verbalizing the things that bothered her. After time with God, I decided that I would take a risk to see where our relationship really stood. She was in my inner circle and how she responded to me expressing how when she didn’t keep her commitment it had made me sad. I felt like someone who had been given a present to find that the box was empty. I wanted to make sure she knew that she didn’t owe me anything but in a friendship we need to know what’s important to each other. I thought of all the good things that could come of it for her as well as me…Maybe this was a blind spot for her? It might help her to grow. Maybe she didn’t know how important it was to me? So, I took a chance. I would love to say that we worked through it all and honored each other but that didn’t happen.
It started off okay. Laverne was horrified and couldn’t believe she forgot but her response seemed to be more about the fact that she couldn’t believe she wasn’t perfect…then texted me after she’d had time to think about it. She came to some conclusions about how to move forward:
- She should not have made that commitment (she didn’t really hear from God)
2. She was taking God’s place and trying to save me
WHAT THE HECK? No, I thought, bottom line: you didn’t do what you said you would and that affected me but that was not her conclusion. I was able to look at the relationship without fearing the loss of love. I finally concluded that based on her 2 reasons/response, moving forward would mean that she would not keep her commitments to me and probably wouldn’t make them in the future
I would like to have received a “Thank you for telling me, Jennifer. I’m sorry. I did not keep my commitment but it was not out of a lack of love. Knowing that’s important to you, I will keep that in mind in the future.” It got turned around and she was the victim which simply didn’t work for me anymore. Mayhem came in with pride, blame, deflection, icing out behaviors ensued with some below the belt punches. We had to do it her way and that no longer worked for me either. We both needed to be heard and considered. It hurt like hell but I was no longer believing that my friendship was worth nothing. It is a valuable commodity and precious. If someone doesn’t treat it as such then that friendship doesn’t belong in the house of my heart. Of course, being bitter would only hurt us. Chasing and trying to change a person is fruitless. We can love and forgive but not pull close in vulnerability.
I felt the chaos in my heart as our relationship disintegrated but I worked through it by being honest and gentle with myself, forgiving and loving myself and her through it. MY PEACE is not subject to the whims of others or ruled by my need for their love and acceptance. God totally helped me through it and I didn’t try to force things. I cried about the end of this friendship and I laid my head upon His chest and felt such peace.
Psalm 131:2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother's milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
What I learned:
I was potty-trained in relationships during this season. I was learning to self soothe. Self soothing is a mommy term in case you didn't know. It’s a dance that the mommy and baby play as the baby starts to become more independent. Too little cuddling leaves the baby anxious and fearful. Self soothing happens after a baby has a secure foundation that their needs will be met. God had been holding me close as I worked through my marriage stuff and in exerting my independence in relationships. The baby slowly learns to quiet itself rather than crying out constantly for others to pacify their anxiety. Having the security that their needs will be met, allows them to be still and rest in safety. The baby matures and goes from breast feeding, to holding their own bottle, from someone spoon feeding them to holding their own spoon and on and on where they don’t need someone else to coddle them. We learn through that process to have the ability to ask and meet our own needs from within and communicate them instead of having a meltdown. It would be pretty silly to be breast feeding your baby at five years old :) but that’s what we act like if we don’t have the safety of the foundation of unconditional love. When we don’t know how to self soothe, cannot quiet our soul without comfort from outside us. When our soul is noisy and fussy we can't rest. We sometimes want, especially as women, for someone to come make us okay, to agree with us, and to soothe us when really that comes from the confidence of knowing we are unconditionally loved by our Creator.
Sure, this friendship added some poop to my potty training but it wasn’t attached to my soft babies butt long enough to became a diaper rash. I didn’t go out and jump into a new and improved diaper of a friendship nor did I hide the dirty diaper and stuff the pain inside myself. I realized I didn’t need diapers anymore in my relationships. Diapers are for babies and good for a season but they also irritate if we sit in our mess for too long. Our ability to pull back into our heart with God and manage our emotions is key. Once our soul is quiet, we can have a conversation with our heart. We can then speak out of love and not self protection, anger, unforgiveness. My butt was ready for some breathable big girl panties and diaper rashes of the heart were in my past as I learned to communicate courageously.
It was easy at that point to recognize the dead bodies in Laverne’s past from this very type of behavior. She wanted to powerfully confront everyone else's behavior but was not able to be confronted without becoming the victim. I was also able to look at Shirley (me-I have a trail of dead bodies behind me as well;) you can ask my ex-husbands ;) Pretending to be wantless and needless, false humility, only wanting to give and being too prideful to receive. Being a chicken sh@# in communication. I set up a dynamic in relationships where the other person carried all the power and I was powerless. I was able to assess this relationship without condemnation for Laverne or myself-just what was okay in my life and not okay. There were some behaviors that weren’t serving me well mainly because I was so afraid of rejection and they were like a dirty diaper I had been wearing for years.
I now look at relationships like investments that need to be adjusted like a portfolio. My financial advisor is Jesus. He gives me insider trading tips ;) Relationships are a mutual investment. I no longer give people a place in my heart that they have not invested in nor do I over invest without being directed by God. I am kind, assertive, funny, passionate, creative and genuine. Anyone who does not appreciate that is welcome to not be in my life.
I’m still maturing in my love for both myself and others but Mayhem did not win. His Perfect Love casts out the Mayhem of the heart. We will have trials and tribulations in relationships as we learn to love others and ourselves but unconditional love is a sturdy foundation. Mayhem came in and he huffed and he puffed but He could not blow the house of my heart down…maybe drop a tree limb on the roof ;) but my foundation was unshaken.
If you struggle with fear in relationships, will you pray this prayer with me?
God, let your perfect love cast out ALL fear in my heart. Show me through action how loved and precious I am to you in Jesus name. Amen! So be it!
Love this! Miss you and your wisdom!
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