The Mess of Relationships

I have control issues. I love to bake because I not only have a crazy sweet-tooth, but because I also enjoy knowing that if I mix the right measure of each ingredient, mix it properly, and bake it at the right temperature for the right amount of time, I can expect to receive just what I was working on.

Life doesn’t work that way.  Relationships don’t work that way. We want them too. We want relationships to fit in nicely tied packages that fit “just so” in our lives. The truth is that relationships are messy, often inconvenient, and sometimes flat-out hard. We can’t add “the right ingredients” and follow our “recipe” and be guaranteed that it will produce exactly what we intended. But the other truth is that relationships are worth it. And sometimes the results are even better than our recipe could have produced to begin with. As people, we crave intimacy and connection with other people. We were designed for it.

This last year I realized something so ugly within myself that I didn’t want to face it. Have you ever had a moment like that? When you want to just throw your personal “junk” into the proverbial closet and pretend it isn’t there? I like to think that I’m a people person. I thrive on people. People energize me. On Sunday mornings I have the privilege of serving alongside of children’s ministry volunteers at the church I call home. I often feel so excited to be around these people that I feel like the hyper squirrel from the movie Ice Age.  People excite me. People possibilities make me dream big.

But the truth is that people also terrify me. People are wild cards: unpredictable, and having the capacity to cause great destruction both physically and emotionally. The “thing” that I love also scares me to my core. This last year, one of the biggest reasons that I stepped away from writing was to deal with this exact thing.  The Lord allowed me to reach a point of collapse nearly a year ago in which I found myself living in fear. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t enjoy things. I could only contemplate the harm that people can do, and it was scary.

I believe that our enemy threw me into a pit intended to destroy my hope in the Lord. Admittedly, there were many days that I questioned if I would make it through that season. But our God is gracious, patient, and is able to turn such pits into beautiful years of work and accomplishment in our hearts, even if it is painful and trying. The Lord didn’t leave me in my fear, but met me in it. He challenged me to really come face to face with my deepest fears, most of which revolve around the loss of my son or the forced separation of me from him, and to deal with them on me knees. I will spare you all of the details of the last year, but through days, weeks, and months of asking God hard questions, seeking truth, and seeking counsel the Lord has shown me repeatedly that even if the worst occurs, the story is not over. He is God. He is good. His grace is big enough to carry us through our deepest fears.

I share all of that because this last year was tempting for me to hide away and forget about people. To shut down and say, “Relationships are too hard, too messy, and I don’t want any piece of that.” The truth, however, is that God loves people, and I love God. God’s spirit in me beckons me to share His love for people that cost Him everything. The Gospel shows us that Jesus disregarded the mess that we as people are, and met us right in the thick of it. He came into the cold water with us, so to speak, and rescued us. He endured ridicule, shame, lies about Himself, excruciating death, and the wrath and separation from God the father all for the sake of…us.

All of this has left me broken. God has wrecked shop on my heart, and I find myself slowly taking more risks to let people “in.” I tend to hold people at arms length. The world tells me that it’s because of abandonment issues and the tumultuous childhood and adolescent years I had. But God says it doesn’t have to be that way, and He is completely revamping my heart to pursue people in spite of the mess. I want to be willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of relationship. Acts 2 shows us that disciples grew in number because the Church was the church, living in authentic community and relationship with one another. There is great power in relationships.

How can we intentionally invest in people? How can we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to others? How can we let go of our control issues to get into the mess of “people?”