“If I hurt you, it's not what I wanted” - troy

The saying goes 'Love hurts'. I'm starting to realise how true that is. With love comes pain. It's just how it goes. As soon as I open myself up to care about a friend, relative, partner, whoever, I am opening myself up to pain and disappointment. It may just be a small thing like the disappointment of someone not being there for your show or a friend not calling when they said they would. Or maybe you’ve been unfortunate enough to experience the deeper hurt of betrayal by a friend, a parent leaving you, a partner cheating on you.

I recently experienced a couple of painful incidents - thankfully none of those major ones but it still hurt none the less. One incident was painful because someone upset me. And the other was painful because I upset someone else without meaning to and felt awful that I had caused them pain. At first the pain made me want to withdraw. I figured the easiest way to deal with it would be to just cut that person out of my life so they can't hurt me and I won't ever have to feel the pain of knowing I've upset them again.

But as I was ranting to God about my feelings and telling Him my master plan of how I would avoid future heartache, He made me realise something.The only way to avoid being hurt by people is to avoid people! All people! Everyone. If I cut myself off from every person who ever hurt me or let me down soon there would be no-one left in my life!! We are all imperfect. We try our best to love each other but we get it wrong. The Bible says ‘God is love – who ever lives in love lives in God and God lives in him’. The flip side of that is that when we are disconnected from God, we are disconnected from love – we love in a less than perfect way. And so we hurt each other without meaning to.

To those of you who are close to me, who dare to love me, here are 2 things that are certain in this life that I want to warn you of....
1) You will hurt me
2) I will hurt you

I suck at loving. If effort counted I’d score pretty good but somehow, no matter how hard I try, I get it wrong. I appear to have been born with my foot in my mouth and I appear to have transmission problems when it comes to love. What do I mean when I say that? I mean that when I try to transmit love through my words or actions, somehow it often seems to be received much differently than I intended it. Often what I meant as a blessing is received as a curse!! Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel like the world would be a safer place for others if you had the words ‘I will hurt you’ tattooed on your forehead? Because then people would have different expectations of you. Then they wouldn’t be so surprised when you forget to call or say something stupid and so maybe it wouldn’t hurt them (or at least hurt less). Perhaps then they wouldn’t expect you to just know how to love them right and never make mistakes.

Why do we have such high expectations of each other? I mean, we’re all different. Love isn’t a one size fits all kinda thing. We each require our own special brand of love – some like hugs, some don’t, some need loving words, others need gifts and others couldn’t care less about that stuff as long as you give them your time. For some reason we expect each other to be mind readers and to just know that we need a hug right now or will get offended if you don’t text back. And then we get hurt when it turns out that our friend or partner or parent doesn’t fulfil our unspoken needs!!! It’s utter madness.

Anyway, I digress, back to my poor ability to communicate the love I feel. I do love you but I don’t know how best to show that I love you. And so I make my best guess and often guess wrong. Or sometimes I do know how to show you love but I still manage to make a mess of it anyway. Either way, at times my words or actions cause you to think I don’t care when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. And then you feel pain and for that I’m very sorry.

Please help me to be better at loving you. I’m trying to master the art of telepathy but until I’ve got it down would you please tell me how you need to be loved. What do I need to do or not do, say or not say? And please have patience with me while I’m learning. I’m never gonna get it totally right but I promise to keep trying.

Enough about me...let’s talk about you...

You will hurt me. No matter how hard you try not to, it’s still gonna happen. One day you’ll make a flippant remark, or forget to call, or get drunk and make the biggest mistake of your life. And you won’t mean to hurt me – cos you love me and you’d never ever thinkingly cause me pain. But still, despite your best efforts, it’ll happen. Even if you stay away from me to try to avoid hurting me, you’ll still hurt me cos I’ll feel the pain of your absence and the hole you leave in my life by not being there. You will hurt me!!!

But I’m learning to be ok with that. I accept that it’s gonna happen some times. Not that I’m giving you permission to just hurt me willy nilly you understand!! But good friendships are worth fighting for right? Keeping my friendship with you is more important than preserving myself from ever feeling pain. And besides – God is able to heal even the deepest pain or the most broken of hearts. There is nothing you can do to me that He can’t put right. You can’t protect me from ever feeling pain – much as you want to. Instead, I ask that you’ll keep trying your best to love me and that you’ll trust God to look after me when it goes a little bit wrong.

Perhaps it’s not just me you’re trying to protect from pain. Perhaps you’re also trying to protect yourself from pain – the pain of knowing that your words or actions are the source of my tears. The pain of feeling helpless to be able to fix it. And the pain and guilt of the memory of the other tears you have caused in other lives in years gone by.

Just a small digression on the subject of pain....I’m learning that pain isn’t always a bad thing. I shouldn’t fear it or run from it. Pain isn’t nice but at least it makes me feel alive. And pain gets my attention. It often causes me to sit up and take note and rethink how I’m doing things. It helps to show me where I’m going wrong. Pain also makes me appreciate the good times all the more – it brings contrast. And the most beautiful thing about pain is the way it drives me closer to God and to the people around me. You can be sure that whenever I start to think I’ve got things all sorted and I don’t need anyone else that will be the time pain will come into my life. And I’ll cry out to God or fall into a friends arms sobbing uncontrollably (or both) and we’ll share precious, intimate moments together that we never would have done if it wasn’t for the pain. I wouldn’t miss those moments for anything!!!

And a word about love.....Love isn’t just a mushy feeling that comes and goes. Real love is an action and a choice. When I feel hurt I can choose to run away or I can choose to keep loving you despite the pain. God still acts with love towards me no matter what I do or how much I hurt Him or try to run away. He loves you like that too. And I want to learn to act with love towards you just like He acts with love towards you. So, I may feel hurt or angry towards you sometimes. I may really dislike you some days. But I will always still love you until the day I die....maybe even longer.

In order to keep loving, grace and forgiveness are required. If I can’t show you grace when you’re grumpy or forgive you when I’m hurting then there’s no hope for us. Grace and forgiveness make the world work. Without it we’ll be living in a world full of broken relationships and broken people. Wait....we do live in a world full of broken relationships and broken people. Looks like we need to learn to show more grace, need to learn the art of forgiving.

So, I’ll do you a deal. I’ll show you grace and forgive you when you hurt me. But please will you show me grace when I mess up too? Will you keep forgiving me for the sake of our friendship? Please don’t give up on us. I really hope that you think our friendship is worth fighting for.

I love you

I wanna walk like you.....

Just read this Bible verse that hit me smack between the eyes. Check out 1 John 2:6...

"Whoever claims to live in Him (God) must walk as Jesus did".

Woah!!! What a challenging statement!?! Take some time to think about it and really digest it.

Here's a few things to consider as you do...
1) Do you claim to live in God? Do people know you are a follower of Jesus or do you keep it quiet?
2) The verse says that those who claim to live in God MUST walk as Jesus did - it's not just a suggestion, it's a necessity!
3) What does it look like to walk like Jesus? Take some time to read the gospels and see for yourself. How did Jesus treat people? Who did he spend his time with? What was his relationship with God like?
4) One of the main things that stands out about Jesus is the miracles he did. If someone was sick he didn't just wish them well - he healed them!! He raised the dead, turned water into wine, calmed storms and walked on water!!! The thing that challenges me most about this verse is that I don't see many signs and wonders like that in my life. Why? Because, unlike Jesus, I fail to put to use the power and authority that has been given to me by God's Holy Spirit. If I am to properly walk as Jesus walked then I need to make some changes.

What about you?