Extraordinary Love – Part Two
It is Easter Sunday. After service, I meet up with my ex-Husband for a family dinner with our boys. In passing, he says about my last boyfriend, “I saw the way he was and I thought ‘if she wanted that she could’ve just stayed with me.” Now, this was one of the most honest, candid things I’ve heard in some time. It was also incredibly Earth shattering.
When I went through my separation and divorce, I lived with the intention to do the work on myself that I needed to do so that I didn’t “re-package”. I desperately did not want to end up in the same place after another 10 years, with the same man in a different body. I didn’t date anyone for 15 months. I actively participated in intensive therapy with a very talented professional. When I began dating someone seriously, I thought he was completely different. He certainly looked different, as different from my Husband as night and day. He was kind and attentive and loving. When he was with me, we were very connected. It was as if there was no one else in the world. With him, I felt special, beautiful and alive. I opened up to him in a way that I had never opened up to another man in my whole life. For all of these reasons, I thought he was different. I thought I was different. As it turns out, everybody in my life could see he was more of the same. Everybody, except of course, me.
Preparing for Your Extraordinary Love
Last week I laid the foundation for preparing for our Extraordinary Love. It is one thing to be able to see the lessons. It is quite another to apply those lessons. So, this week I am going to try to apply these things to my life.
KNOW YOUR IDENTITY. We can never really know our identity as long as we are prideful, headstrong and tenacious. Humility is something that I am learning. My goodness, have I made that a hard lesson for myself. I am proud. I think I am really talented. I truly, honestly believe I can do anything all by myself. I don’t need anyone’s help. On the one hand, you have to admire that, right? On the other hand, these are the thoughts of a rebellious child of God. I know because I have these thoughts. In all honesty, I like my rebellious spirit. It makes life interesting and I have been extremely resistant to letting go of this rebellion. It is what I believed my identity to be for my entire life. Here is the problem: As long as we live with this pride, we will have lessons in life that humble us. We can learn it when we’re 5 or 35 or 105, but we are going to learn it eventually.
I have a four year old who could accurately be described as prideful, headstrong, tenacious and rebellious. He makes me appreciate how patient God is with us. I can see how my son is making mistakes because I know a little bit more than he does. But, I have discovered that I have to let him learn by trial and error. I literally say to him, “Jack, if you do x, y is going to happen. You need to trust that what I am telling you is true. As long as you don’t believe me, you are going to make your life way harder than it has to be. But, if you must, go ahead.” At least ½ of the time, he does “x” anyway. And, I say to him, “you choose the action, you choose the consequences.” I really hope by the time he is a teenager some of this sinks in. Pray for us on that one. Needless to say, I understand him because I am him.
In a similar fashion, God has been gracious enough to show me my faults. I jump into things too quickly. I try to force my will on situations. I believe that my way is the only way. Much like Ruth, God brought me to an uncomfortable place. My partnership at work fell apart, my marriage fell apart and my children went through trials. There was a time when I thought I could make all of these things right. There was a time when I thought I could say the right thing, do the right thing or write the right thing and situations would get better. It didn’t get better. My whole life fell apart. I had no idea how to fix it. I was in a deep, dark hole. This is where pride and egotism landed me. It didn’t have to be that way. That is what I chose by being controlling, impatient, and mistrustful. I wanted the world to see me as successful. I wanted to be described as accomplished. I wanted to be the best of the best, to prove that I had value. When I wasn’t trying to prove myself, I was trying to find peace and pleasure. I was constantly planning vacations and fun. I was self-indulgent, over-indulgent. People would say I “loved life.” It looked fun from the outside. But, the truth is that I hated life … that is why I was constantly trying to escape it. I had beautiful children, good family and friends, and, yet, it was never enough. I was lonely and self-destructive. I was constantly looking for that high, that good feeling that I was “living life to the fullest”. It landed me with a handful of lonely, empty vices that looked really fun but were never worth what they cost.
For the first time in my life, I actually celebrated Easter this year. I don’t mean this was my first Easter Egg Hunt or picture with the Easter Bunny. I mean that I am beginning to experience what Easter really means. All good things are available for us to tap into. We have an unlimited supply of peace, joy, happiness and love. Here is the kicker: there is only tap. It isn’t attached to a keg, a bottle of wine, a bakery of chocolate cake, a spouse, a vacation, great sex, a job, a child, a pill, a diet, a party or your friends. We all try to get to the good things in life through these avenues and reach a dead end. I know that I have tried them all. It’s not that they’re not fun for a moment. They most certainly are fun. But, then one day you realize it didn’t work. That feeling of anxiety, loneliness, desperation or sadness came back. We simply cannot heal our imperfections with imperfect things. And yet, there is hope. There is hope because on that first Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, we were given a way. We were given a way to access all of perfection of God to heal us here on Earth. He is the only way, the only “tap” so to speak. Only with His perfection can we begin to heal our imperfections.
Recognizing Your Extraordinary Love
It may seem that I have gotten off track. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about relationships? Well, truly there is only one relationship that matters. If we can somehow manage to get it right, all the others will fall into place. That relationship is the one we have with the truest parts of ourselves, with God that lives within us. My relationships were dysfunctional for my whole life because I was dysfunctional. My relationships were dysfunctional because I’d been running, full-sprint away from the one relationship that really mattered.
Originally, my intent was to draw some personal parallels from my life to recognizing our Extraordinary Love. I envisioned that I’d talk about some of the men in my life and how I’d missed the mark, thinking they were my extraordinary love when they were actually more of the same. And, as I was meditating on this issue, this is the dialogue that went on in my head:
You already have it. You are searching for an extraordinary love that is right in front of you. What have you wanted from an extraordinary love? Comfort? – I gave you that. You wanted someone to provide for you? I have done that. You wanted someone to chase you? I have sought you everywhere you have gone. Where you went, I went. You rebuked me. You ran from me. You tried to hurt me. You spoke poorly of me. And yet, I was there. Always, I was there. I would chase you to the end of the Earth and beyond to be able to live with you every day. You wanted love? I have loved you, exactly as you are. When you didn’t feel it from anyone else in the world, I was pouring it over you. All love given is not received. I could never love you more or less. The amount of love you feel from Me is only a reflection of you; a reflection of what you are willing to receive.
This is where I end up. I intended to write about Ruth and Boaz. Maybe I have, I don’t know. I think I have wanted it to be about a man. I have wanted it to be about my Boaz. I have wanted to seek extraordinary love in a companion. As it turns out, it isn’t about a man, it’s about The Man. We are all promised an extraordinary love. I am realizing it just may not look exactly like we expected. But it’s better than we could have ever imagined. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, trying and trying to get home only to realize I was always there. I’m going to go sit with my red slippers and marinate on this one. Until next week my friends …
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