Shame Revisited
Villagers – The Soul Serene
Middling
My father told me when I was young and starting to play sports, “There will always be someone better than you.” I have found that to be true. Does that mean you should not try? No. It is okay to do something and not be the best. At the same time, it is good to have an ideal toward which you are working. If we did not have our ideals, we would have no drive. We must just get comfortable with the fact that we are always traveling toward our ideals and never actually arriving (or arriving only for a short time).
If your ideal is to have good relationships, you will probably have a hard time when one of your relationships goes sour. This can be problematic because our relationships are always in flux. You might experience a similar thing when working. You expect to get the job “done,” but there is always more work to do – sometimes the same thing you did last week! Life is about repeatedly coming back to the canvas to work the paint, rather than sitting down and completing a finished, presentable painting. Even if you finish a work, you still have room to improve. It never stops, but your work will be more satisfying if you get comfortable with being in the middle somewhere.
Field Report – Pale Rider
Connections
We get glimpses into that type of connection now. Some day we will see fully and our connections with each other will be more robust and fulfilling. I have no idea what that looks like, but I have an inkling of it because it was planted deep in my soul. I am an eternal being. I am interested in how our connections with each other and God will some day be realized. For now, we live in this incomplete dispensation. When everything is stripped away, it will all be revealed. Let us live into that and learn about what that next new thing will be like. It is that for which we live.
Grief Support
The Difficulty of Intimacy
How does this look in our lives? Those of us who are avoidant (introverts?) look for any reason to steer clear of relationship and then blame others for not offering us intimacy just the way we want it. Others do not respond quickly enough or the exact way we demand. Others of us constantly seek out connection, but never really wait and trust, needing to constantly check in or determine others’ responses for them, rather than letting them respond in their own way. We move toward others for relationship, but never really open up and trust. These orientations, whether moving away or toward others, are two sides of the same coin. Neither are necessarily trusting.
What happens in a genuine give-and-take relationship is that there is the transmission of something between the two – love, concern, or even just instrumental care. What is needed for this transmission to take place is actually quite simple. The receiver must be open and seek (which requires vulnerability), and he or she must stop and wait for the other person to respond. We do not often do this. We either close ourselves off from connection, or we are constantly seeking and never stepping back and waiting for others to care for us. We never get what we want because we don’t open ourselves, and then wait and trust.
You may believe you are a trusting person, but you have ways you are protecting yourself and preventing connection. This happens in our relationships with each other and with God. The work is to practice letting down these defenses in some of the opportunities before us. Our defenses play out subtly in even our closest relationships. Trust requires risk. It requires gaining insight into how you are self-protecting and for you to let down these defenses on a regular basis.