Freedom In Letting Go

I think I am beginning to understand how expectations on relationships can potentially destroy any health that is found in relationships. I’ve been going through some stuff that has really opened my eyes to this fact. It happens in the slightest of ways. It’s when our expectations take on more importance than others or relating in a non-selfish way. It happens too often, and I have found myself wondering why some relationships that I have, aren’t working out so well. Once I started letting expectations go in my relationships, a new profound awareness of how selfish I really was opened up my horizons. It’s really fascinating to me actually. I never thought I would really come to grips that I was the problem for the longest time in my relationships. That my expectations were held in more importance than the people I am learning how to grow in relations with. I think God has really started opening my eyes to what is actually going on here. A good friend and I were talking about this not too long ago, and how it starts when we don’t even see it. How unhealthy relationships start with our parents, our grandparents and how it makes its way up to us. It’s a profound and complex issue I think, and I may just be touching the surface now, but I think it’s a good place to start though.

Here is something my friend, Kent shared with me that made perfect sense in relation to what I am talking about here.

“People we have been in relationship with will always react to a changing of the dance. Even if they hate the present dance...it is familiar and gives them a sense of control. You don't have to attempt to change their dance directly...that would be a violation of their freedom to choose for themselves. But the simple act of you changing your dance will in effect change the dance you are in with everyone around you. Some will come to see that the change was needed and is healthy...some won't.”

If you drop all expectations, the pressure is off, and then real relationship can start to happen. The freedom I give others to be who they are and do what they will without the intrusion of my own expectations or desires, relationships will start to mold into what they were supposed to be, in a more natural form and not in forced or expected way. They may never end up to be more than a shallow relationship, but, at least this way, I am no longer feel the responsibility to hold something together that wasn’t my job to do so in the first place.

Though I feel like I have barely touched the surface on this on-going problem, I think Father has opened my eyes to how dangerous and threatening expectations are on relationships. I am releasing myself to freedom in my relationships and see them for what they really are, and not how I want them to look like.