Union with others is established as my own heart and mind align. Aloofness and emotional withdrawal occur in relationships when I feel separated from my own true being. When I take care of the root, the branches bear good fruit. If I focus on a branch instead, then every relational offshoot is weakened. The key to restoration is underground. Winds blow and branches sway; but a strong root system empowers any relationship to weather the storm.
Feelings that trigger emotional outbursts are like storm systems, temporal in nature. I feel what I feel, but the feelings do not form my beliefs. Today’s rain is tomorrow’s sunshine. Truth and love are above the storm in a place undisturbed by gravitational pulls and shifting patterns of hot and cold. I allow, accept, and even affirm my own feelings but then I run them through the sieve of Christ in me. Who I am is higher than how I feel; who I am will temper feelings before they cause harm to those around me.
Trusting the inner work of God in each other is pivotal. God has never asked me to fix any relationship, much less my marriage. He reminds me of the unique inseparableness of my union with Him and that awareness naturally repairs the breach I experience in other relationships. Schisms heal through the union I find within myself. My soul returns to Him and all else aligns accordingly. When I am my own true self I relate well with others and possess the necessary grace to look past their frailty. Unconditional love proceeds from who I am; it is not contingent upon another’s conduct. I live with the promise that love conquers all.
Unconditional love may be different than imagined. Unconditional love doesn’t mean there are no consequence for actions or repercussions for remaining blind. It simply means staying true to who I am even if another forgets who they are. I remain true to myself even when someone else is temporarily locked into their lower, intolerant, selfish nature. My love will not be withheld and my interaction may or may not change. Change will be in response to the love I know myself to be rather than a reaction of impatience or annoyance. Unconditional love takes care of the beam in its own eye and trusts the speck in your eye to work itself out.
These days I strive to conserve emotional energy by looking past attitudes in others that formerly triggered negative reactions in me. I used to spend a lot of time trying to convey how their actions made me feel unloved, unappreciated, or undervalued. Now I’ve found a passage that takes me past the maze of “rights and wrongs” that previously kept me looking at relationships from the outside in. I’ve let go of the indignant need for others to see themselves and have found simplicity in my own self view.
I’m at peace knowing that the well-intended self-help industry cannot teach me how to love and be loved, establish boundaries, create intimacy, or to become a woman who can make her man glad he”s a man. The things I tried to learn to make my marriage (and other relationships) enjoyable possessed one major flaw – they came at me from the outside in. They were based on behavior modification rather than heart transformation. Only God can transform a heart. There are no tips, tricks, secrets, laws, principles, or practices that can turn a selfish heart into a self-less heart. Repentance is the key to change and even that is a gift from God. In marriage, as in Christ, I have no “rights.” I am a slave, bound by love…the true nature of my being. A good marriage is born in the revelation of who I really am.
Love [the true nature of my being] never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.
1 Corinthians13:4-7 MSG [parenthesis mine]