I hunger for deep connection with friends and family. I love it when I sense someone grasps my ideas and tracks with me or understands the undercurrent of our conversation, the longings, the disappointments and aches lying beneath the spoken words. I love the comraderie of shared laughter dissipating loneliness.
As I approach Easter, I'm newly aware of how my searching sideways for connection sometimes satisfies me and sometimes fizzles. When I depend on people around me for close connection, often they can't give it. My desires turns into a demand, then anger at another's failure to meet my needs.
But those people are searching too, in the way they need. Probably I fail to give them the understanding and support they crave.
Often when don't see a light of happiness in those living with me. I search for what I've done wrong. Have I failed them in some small way? perhaps unintentional, but which chafes them?
Some humility comes from that line of thinking, but more often craziness. My intuition about what has displeased the other person can be completely wrong. When I make pleasing others a goal, a necessary objective, it leads me away from God into a maze of introspection. Fault-finding and shame are sisters to introspection.
Yesterday as I sat in a special service for Good Friday I heard Jesus telling me to let go, to surrender to him these dear ones and their reactions to me. There is a God and it's not me. (John Ortberg)
I cannot control a person's reaction to me through my warmth and wisdom and trying hard to please.
So for me in this season of life, meditating on the the death of Jesus on the cross means forgiveness for all the ways I try to heal myself.
It means Jesus was broken for my brokenness and stands offering his healing to me.
It means God wants a connection to me so deep and consistent that it constantly meets my desire in me to be seen and known.
It means I can let go of the people (husband, children, friends) who have sometimes met that need for connection and bless them as they go on their way to other tasks and relationships.
I can trust God to meet my connection needs in new ways every day through various means. Even the little birds fluttering their wings in the birdbath bring a message to me.
It means a new and rich life is here today and tomorrow and always for me.
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