Thursday, May 15, 2008

Unraveling Relationships and Letting Them Be

I am a person who loves people! I look forward to meeting new people and engage in great conversations whether they are deep and personal or just on normal casual stuff. There is always a risk involved in friendships/relationships that form when I release my true self and become vulnerable and completely exposed to others. I have tried not to focus on the risk that is involved when in the process of being real. I focus on the possibilities of discovering a new life. However, after much thought and experience recently, I think that perhaps it wasn’t the smartest way of doing relationships! It has hurt to be real and in some cases has even broken some close ties between a couple of friends and I. The focus however, changes when I am in these relationships not just for myself, but also for Father and his desire to come through in them. I have come to the conclusion that Father has used me in people’s lives and when that time is over and its time to move on, I am learning to be okay with that! Now, its not exactly the way I thought some relationships would turn out, and I used to think part of the risk was to overcome differences and grow in more of a deeper friendship, but that doesn’t always happen. If one of both parties isn’t interested in pursuing each other in the relationship, than it cannot be forced to grow. It is what it is and no matter how much I would want it to be more and grow, I can’t make it happen! I am getting to a better place of understanding that Father will put people in our lives for moments at a time, and when its time to let go and move on than its okay! I have struggled with this so many times losing people as friends and trying to figure out what I did wrong to lose these friends. All I can say is I gave these relationships a go and now it was up to the others that were involved. Whether they wanted to pursue me back or not, now that I know that they don’t want any contact with me anymore, its time to move on! I have started to realize that maybe my struggle partly was thinking that the more I invested in these relationships, the more these relationships became God to me, but God needs to be God to me and not people or relationships! I now like to think of relationships more as great learning lessons that Father will use to draw us closer to Him. Isn’t that what its about in the first place? I think so! I am in a better place now and am learning to allow the natural unraveling occur in these friendships and letting them be what they are.

4 comments:

Kent said...

You are right Nicole, there are things to be learned in all of it. I think within it all the Spirit is at work to set both parties free. We have been created to be relational and we are at our best at times and our worst at others as we go about relating to each other. The freer we become I think the better times will out number the not so good ones.

There is statement in The Shack about the process of relationships that preceeds my favorite quote from the book. I think this is a profound statement.

I suppose that since most of our hurts come from relationships so will our healing....and I know that grace rarely makes sense to those looking in from the outside.

lydia said...

Good post, I think I completely relate to what you shared....it's so neat to watch God do the transforming work in relationships.....

I also wanted to say, I love what you have done with your blog, I mean I love it, I love the picture in the Header and I love the purple...I just love it!! It's amazing.......!!!

Much peace to you!!

Manuela said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog a while back. I haven't been blogging much lately... Anyway, I wanted to say I can relate to the stuggle in this post and thanks for sharing it. It's hard to let go when people have hurt us and don't want to continue the relationship (or reconcile)... We all do screw up, but I think the key to good relationships is humility( owning our wrongs), kindness and respecting the persons freedom to make the choices they do, whether we agree or not. Most of us learn and grow from our mistakes anyway. The greatest challenge is to love those who mistreat us and knowing HOW to do it. It's not easy... but Jesus helps us with that and meets us in our pain.

Nicole said...

Thanks all for commenting! I really appreciate what you all had to say! Father has really transformed my mind in regards to frienships/relationships! It is all good! I am blessed!

Welcome Manuela! Thanks for stopping by!

Love and Freedom

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