Relational Ponderings...

I have dearly missed writing in this blog. And yet it's that very absence of such an activity that is part of my conundrum/what's led me to write this post.
I can't seem to escape the feeling lately that a lot of my relationships are somewhat a mess.

The crazy thing is this problem doesn't alarm me nearly as much as it used to. Before, such a revelation would have represented a hopeless problem, something that would probably never be fixed and was therefore an insurmountable trouble to try and conquer.

The cool thing is that Xenos and the belief of having a largely improved relationship with God writes that off as a lie right away. A lie that God will have no problem overturning as long as I continue to let my trust lie in Him.

But though it doesn't fill me with dread and despair as it would have a year or so ago, nevertheless it is starting to become quite disconcerting.

By my way of thinking therefore the best way to hash it out is to start pouring words on the page.

To trace the root of the problem, I feel the need to indulge in a trip down memory lane. Luckily that can now be done so at least at a mild skip instead of dragging my feet as though they were heavy blocks of lead.
But I digress.

When I first started to consider myself a truly relational creature, (somewhere around high school) it quickly became apparent that with those I loved and trusted, I was an open book. I'm not saying I prided myself on it, it just was. It existed as an undeniable pull that I rarely wanted to resist.

So I didn't.

By the time I was 17 my heart, struggles, faith, and passions had pretty much all been poured out to anyone I thought might have the vaguest interest.
Then the doctor diagnosed me with depression and suddenly what I had considered an essential element of my character became a detriment.

Because people just don't want to deal with a depressed teenager. Not my parents, not my friends, and not my high school sweetheart that I had foolishly wrapped up my entire identity into.

And you know what? I can't blame them one bit. The truth is I was a miserable wreck, and to this day I don't understand how the few friends who did persevere through that black spot in my life loving me unconditionally never showed signs of fatigue or wanting to call it quits. I just thank God they did, (thank you Justin, Kari, Claire, and Pi)

It was the first time I had to face the facts that there was an awful lot of ugliness inside of me. Since I was unprepared for such a thought, it took a bit of adjusting to learn how to deal with such a discovery.

Thankfully that was the moment in my life when God chose to make our relationship personal. Both through prayers, I cried out at times I felt He was the only one listening, and through the few good friendships that remained in my life that He clearly was using, I began to learn one of the most valuable Christian lessons I would need to make it in my walk with Christ-

We live in a sucky, fallen world full of pain and suffering, and the only one who can fully understand the extent of it and not balk from such a thing is the God of the universe.

I recognize also that I was truly blessed to be pronounced "cured" from my depression only a year later at the age of 18. Though the physical pain and suffering associated with the malady had just started to become a permanent fixture of my life, the emotional and mental despair at least was blissfully lifted with the joy of knowing that God would never let me go back to that dark place again if I trusted Him with the broken pieces of my life.

He as surely put those pieces back together as I am typing this now, and as the days go by I feel more and more whole the more I learn about his character and the power he has to make any situation or circumstances irrelevant. I am more awed and thankful than I can say to learn that my God is both all powerful and all loving, and that He is personal enough to be the only friend that will never let me down.

But that brings us back to friends. More specifically friends, friendships, relationships, etc.

Unfortunately I had several problems at 18 in this area of my life. I didn't know how to relate to my mother other than a constant search for her approval. My middle sister and I were fractious at best, she having an uncanny ability to wound and sting me with spoken barbs, and my attitude towards her being totally self righteous and condescending. And then there was the abusive romantic relationship I had tangled myself up in and was only just now attempting to leave behind. Finally the icing on this already disgusting cake was a whole string of failed female friendships that made me gun shy when it came to girls.

Needless to say that's when I first felt the shields go up.

Suddenly I wasn't quite as eager to pour out my heart and soul to people I felt a connection with. I still did it, but now I was looking to see if the enemy's phasers were being set from stun to kill. I started to suspect something about myself, and that was the conviction that it must only be a matter of time before the next place I got burnt.

What I didn't realize though was it wasn't just that people burnt me, but that it was actually a direct result of me starting to burn them out.

I know now why I did this. I am a slow learner, and though I had learned how to trust God, I had not yet learned to put my identity fully in him. So I tried to make other people my savior, my soul mate, the one who would bear all my burdens and understand all my heartaches. I had to learn the hard way that fallen people in a fallen world simply cannot do this (sorry Mel, Jenni, Amanda, and Kate. I didn't know what I was doing.) So the burning raged on.

The funny thing about fire too is it tends to develop a faster automatic reflex then any other I thing I can think of. We don't want to get burned, so quicker than rational thought we immediately jerk away from the source of the open flame. It's either that or be scorched right?

The process of automatic pulling away from the blaze had started to become embedded in me.

Luckily God had a way of teaching me this lesson too. He brought the amazing man who would become my husband into my life, the first person ever to love me unconditionally as much as anyone who is human possibly can. My other relationships may have been less than they should have been, but for the first time I was getting at least one fairly right. Enough that I could really and truly expose all my issues to him, and instead of cringing from my baggage, he bore it as best he could and showed me how to come out on the other side and be willing to give the load to God to carry. (Thank you Steve.)

Aside from Steve I only had one other way that I completely expressed my feelings and allowed myself to be truly known. Can you guess? It's pretty frickin' obvious.

It was my writing.

My writings are the very core of who I am. I pour myself into it without hesitation because I can always choose who sees it and therefore minimize my chances of getting burnt as much as I think I need to. The more confident I feel about God having control of my personal relationships, the more eager I am to share my writing with as many people as possible. Once I finally complete the arduous task of self publishing my first novel, my innermost thoughts will, (in theory) be available to anyone who chances to find them on Lulu.com or happens to be swayed by my friend Ruby's personal recommendation of me as an author (everyone needs a combination close friend and publicist/you are a blessing Ruby!)

So traveling down this long road, I have come out a married woman with a job I love and sources of confidence I would not have thought possible. God has taught me how to put my trust in Him, and how to continue to be open without fear, so it will not cripple me as it did when I was 17.

But I am a sinful human being, still flawed and still learning. And I'm starting to think God has something else to teach me.

I've noticed lately that the exuberance I once had with my feelings seems somewhat lacking these days. Truthfully I noticed it long before now, but for a quite awhile I've merely considered it as a wise safety measure put in place by the sage wisdom of experience. The scars from the fire wrote that interpretation of things.

Yet now I start to suspect that is dangerously wrong. I am in essence a relational being. This is something I have known about myself for a long time, and no number of burns should change that. To lose my reckless abandon to hug my friends and be free with public and physical demonstrations of my love is to lose something very key about myself. While I agree that allowances should be made for a time and a place, I still find myself in situations where such behavior would be perfectly appropriate, holding back, cautioned, and more standoffish. Who is this stranger I've become? My sneaking suspicion is I don't like her very much.
Alas if that were the only symptom, I might be able to write it off as just a result of me over thinking things too much, (Me over think things? Never!) But there is the other part of who I am that is conspicuously absent as well.

I used to share my writings with anyone who I thought was even remotely interested. I wrote plays for my friends in which my multiple personalities starred for crying out loud-AS BIRTHDAY PRESENTS! And now I barely update my blog, my narratives have all be ceased to be either written or shared, and I feel utterly uninspired to pen or share my work.

This scares me somewhat. The blast doors are coming down here, but I don't remember triggering them. Which means that they have some automated switch I wasn't aware was installed.

I think part of the answer lies in my past. Having God in my life is no guarantee against becoming jaded. God can only help me if my other faculties of observation, awareness, and analysis point me towards His lessons. But the other part of the answer is yet to be found.

Thus starts the search. And the promise I utter now.

I will devote myself to re-finding and embracing the core of my being. And I will petition God to carry me through this quest as He has done every other.
The thing I love most about my life since devoting it to living for Christ, (even if I didn't at first know exactly what that meant) is that contradictions can cease to exist. Exciting and challenging, painful and insightful, or even confusing and illuminating, can mean the same thing without being paradoxical. Both can, and do, occur at the same time.

I am coming to believe that the journey is the story most worth telling in life and literature.

And the story of the journey can never be explained without the relationships that make that journey worthwhile.

So here's a beginning to what I can only hope will be another great story.