Are never easy are they? Even when things look like they could be going well, it’s just a matter of time. The thing I hate the most is how it calls everything else about your life and your self into question. I keep wondering if I’m not as good of a person as I always thought I was. Ugh. It was so much easier when I didn’t care. Now there’s so much pain in the world, I feel like my heart can’t take much more. If only God had blessed me with a cold, unemotional spirit.
Does thinking of relationships as “never easy” and of their ending as “just a matter of time” set you up for success? It hasn’t for me.
I know what you mean about having difficulty separating self-worth from relationships and how sometimes it would be easier to just not care, but I think there’s a reason God wants people to care about the pain in the world. I think that caring about the people in this world and the pain that they are experiencing is an important part of loving God. Sometimes what sounds meaningful in my head looks cheesy when written down. Sorry if that just happened here. Oh, and happy thanksgiving.
Charles Williams writes about falling in love for the first time–the purity of young love–as the closest thing that humankind can come to understanding the love of God for men. But I think that even as that blind love fades, as we get a more mature understanding of people and how they work, we get a glimpse of the whole through a microcosm (sp?).
Doesn’t make it easy, but I don’t think that easy has ever been the point of life. Struggling toward something makes it more worthwhile, and loss puts into perspective the value of having something.
But of course, I go into relationships of all kinds–family, friends, love–expecting that they will last as long as my effort can carry them. When that effort gets to be too much, too taxing (usually true when their efforts aren’t equivalent to mine), then maybe it’s time to let go.
I’m sorry but I have to comment on what a previous commenter wrote about. I’m a little confused but what bothers me is that you get a misunderstanding of what love from God really is. Granted it is different for many but I believe, and most parents will back me up on this, that the love you experience for your child is the only unconditional love that compares to how God loves us. Just my opinion but that really bothered me that people would believe Williams. When you have kids of your own you’ll understand. Sorry if this offends or disappoints but it’s truth. Love is effortless, it’s the actual relationship (liking each other) that needs the effort. Sorry if I hijacked this-didn’t mean to just don’t like the quote.
I sometimes think unrequited love is the closest to God’s love. When we love someone inspite of them not loving us in return. We all know how aweful that feels but imagine for a moment how awful it would feel if you were god and humanity over and over again (not the whole of…but portions) rejected your love on the eternal plain.
The pain I have felt in this regard I believe was a way to truly understand (from God’s persepective) what loving unconditional meant. I still love unconditionally, but what I am now trying to train myself to do is to allow for the possibility and the opportunity that, like God, I have room enough in me to unconditionally love more than one person.