Hope Floats

Definition of RELATIONSHIP

An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence (an involuntary state of mind which seems to result from a romantic attraction for another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated.); love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the context of social, cultural and other influences.

—Synonyms
1.  Dependence, alliance, kinship. 2. Affinity, consanguinity. 

To be in relationship with a person, you have to accept all that they are and LIVE with it. You cannot change a person. They are who they are, and if you believe you are going to change them, walk away now. What that sounds like and what it means are two different things. I had an associate who got left on the editing floor in the rewrite of my life story, and her tag line always said “The only person I can change is me.” (It really was just a line, but that is another story for another day).

There are real and defined reasons why we can’t change each other. We have a habit of not looking further than what is in front of us, when we are each a representative of our life experience.

Every single one of us is shaped by our past. We begin our emotional and mental shaping when we come into this world. According to research, the first three (3) years of life is the most critical to the intellectual and emotional development of a child. During these first three years, 75% of brain growth is completed. What happens in those years provide the building blocks for emotional and intellectual growth throughout a child's primary life. Most children learn by experience first, then by instruction. 

Things that happen in our lives affect our personal definition of love, how we learn to give and receive love, and how we communicate and share in all kinds of relationships. 

Every partner I will ever have comes with this package. I can’t alter how they have been socially, emotionally, physically or mentally shaped. If that development was extremely scarred and irreparably marred, I need to determine whether I am going to be what my Pastor calls “a project chic”. Am I going to take on this other person as my full time project that will fail because I am not the maker?

We make the mistake of thinking we can do supernatural work in another persons life, or we don't even consider the fact that this kid was developmentally raped and pillaged and the best spoils were taken by the perpetrator. What is left is this adult who is unable to relate well in interpersonal engagements.

Some of the very things that we are attracted to in a mate are the things that should make us run. In laymen’s term, if he had a bad childhood, reveled in it as a youth, rebelled against it as a teenager and young adult, and then you met him? 

1.    Take the time to know that about him before you get all caught up in planning a life with him.

2.    Take a good hard look at who he is and who you are. If he wears his pants sagging WITH a belt on, goes to church on historical holidays and is reticent about that, leaves you in a heartbeat to go with his friends, and needs a lot of forgiveness over small issues – he is still going to be that way after you apply your love all over him like it is the healing balm of Gilead. It is not.

3.    If you still decide this is the one for you, get your prayer clothe out and keep it on at all times and do not cease to pray for God to send a visitation of the Holy Spirit to him, because that is the only way he is going to change. A popular idiom says that still waters run deep. You might need to get you a piece of steel for when that deep overflows. I’m not advocating violence, I am just saying.

Not a person alive tries to better them self for the sake of another person and finds success. That endeavor has to be taken by an individual for their own sake to result in any permanent change. 

In the relationship with my ex, I also had my mind set. I am the youngest of 7 girls, and a Daddy's girl. Princess like behavior. Spoiled by many, generally adored. My parents were the only one in our huge family with all girls so that gave us all Princess status with the extended family. 

Another of my shaping factors is that being the youngest of all these girls, I had a big easy chair with popcorn front row seat to interpersonal relationships between men and women. I watched intently. I believe you can learn by the mistakes and the successes of others.  

You can become jaded by the mistakes and successes of others, too. I have a high tolerance for b.s. as long as my needs are being met, and I have a tentative love ability. I do not trust easily and never completely any man outside of my God and my Daddy. I find all other men to be capable of idiocies unimaginable which they can justify in their own sphere of being. This doesn't only extend to men, but mostly it does. 

No matter how wonderful a man may be, I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop. (What the haystackwithaneedleinit

In any event, after the relationship with my husband snuck up on me, I looked at that man (and it took me a long time to gift him with that title…all boys don’t grow to be men, even though they  have the title) and said I didn't want to change him. What I meant was I want him to be changed because he wanted to change. It took me a long time to realize that. We call it loving someone and wanting the best for them. 

I thought I knew him (it was the pheromones); I just didn’t know what it was I should be trying to know about his past. Even when I did see the patterns emerge in his family history, I somehow thought he was different than his ideological make-up. I figured he had made it this far left of the blueprint, he could make it all the way. It wasn’t until well into the marriage when I realized he could no more escape generational curses than he could change himself without an impetus. Even given that, he would have to know what to become in his changing effort. He couldn't change with out personal desire and a lot of hard work. He couldn't change for me - he had to do it for himself.

Some people may hit rock bottom before they seek to change their reality; some may just hit rock bottom and stay there. I found out that there was area for change and improvement in me. Go figure.  I wanted that change so I sought it through God. Though I am still a work in progress, hope floats.

Forgive and Forget

Being divorced throws a curve into tradition. I now consider my children's time with the other parent on holidays that are important. Everything from attending service to returning home to my family is different. Even what I choose as an Easter Sunday dinner has changed, because I am no longer considering how to please a husband. No, now I am determining how to bring shape back to times we would have spent as that family. I have learned that having a plan for these moments will make the difference between sinking and swimming.

It's amazing what you do to comfort and please your mate. That is not a bad thing, it is a necessary extension of love and compromise. Once I was separated, it was not easy to learn to focus that energy back into myself. I had forgotten what it was to please myself (not to be confused with pleasuring myself. That is a different post and an activity my Pastor says will certainly condemn me to purgatory if there was ever such a place...my hands would catch on fire and shrivel and fall off - or grown hair). I think I lost the concept of pleasing  myself somewhere in between 'I do' and 'what the hell is going on here'. Even then, I questioned whether I had done enough, done it right, or done something wrong in being a pleasing wife. 

No, I never became a doormat. I am a strong willed independent woman - been that way all of my life. I am also a caretaker by nature, so I definitely am a people pleaser, but only in the sense that I will do what I can to help anyone who is helping themselves. Did I help him too much? Did I help him into the arms of another (maybe, probably, okay definitely into the arms of other(s))? Did I enable him to lounge in lasciviousness? (No, he was already a broken person).This line of questioning, if you are careful, will lead you right up to the question you really need to answer to move to the next stage of healing from divorce, if  you are careful: 

What part did I play in the demise of this relationship? God show me my part.

I could blame the disintegration of this major life relationship solely on my ex husband. Oh, he had a lot to do with it, maybe a greater percentage than I. I spent ample time wanting him to recognize his multiple and myriad shortcomings and atrocious behaviors and apologize for each one individually. However, God says two cannot walk together unless they agree. That means agreement in the bad as well as the good. It takes two to totally destroy a union blessed and bonded by God, and it is always easier to see the other persons wrongdoings. However, God being God, He gave me an understanding about forgiveness: it cannot be conditional. 

I wrestled with my contribution to the divorce, talking to nearly no person about it. There was no available counsel of wise folk on this one in my life, and lest I find myself comfortable in the padded seat of the scornful or the mutli-faceted friendship of fools and foolishness, I had to fast and pray this one out with God alone. I stayed prayed up, seeking God's wisdom and clarity. If you ask God to show you self, you will see just how un-beautiful you can be without saving grace.I did not appreciate taking a look at myself, but I buckled down and did the work. This is not a pretty process, but I am unaware of any process of change being smooth and without some stretching and growing. The glory in that experience is that He will also forgive and change you. 

Armed with the full recognition that I played a part in this shebang, I was so much more ready to get and give forgiveness. I have heard it said that you can forgive, but you never forget. I think that is just another man made condition. There is no way you could carry out the act of forgiveness, which is continual, if you don't forget the pain and hurt. If you're blessed enough to walk in forgiveness, the sheer remembrance of past events will not through you off your salvation journey because the snare has been removed. This is called growth. 

There are times when I look at the saved man that my ex has become and wonder why he couldn't have been that man before; but then I remember that all things work together for the good of those who love Christ Jesus and are called according to His purpose. What purpose is that other than to lift Him  up so that all men would be drawn unto him? I also await Boaz, cause I know God is readying him right now for the proverbial and virtuous woman that I am. Let me go glean in the fields.......