There’s a war raging inside of many of us. We yearn to have intimate friends in our lives and yet we fear letting people get too close to us. We suspect that if they really knew us, they would reject us. It’s happened before.
We’re afraid that if we let them know about our vulnerabilities they will use them against us. Others have.
So we remain on guard. We don’t share too much. We don’t let anyone get to know us very well. There may be plenty of people around us, but we only let them see a small fragment of who we really are. It feels safer that way, but it also feels shallow and lonely.
The truth is, it was God’s intention for us to be in close relationship with both our creator and his creation. He even went so far to say that loving him with our whole heart, mind and soul is of highest importance and the second is to love those people around us.
He didn’t just say we should smile and wave when we see them. He didn’t suggest that it was enough to just hang out with people. He said we should love them. The dictionary describes love as “an intense emotional attachment” or “an underlying sense of oneness.” Whoa. That sounds a bit risky, don’t you think?
Michael Dye, the creator of the Genesis Process Relapse Prevention Program often says, “100% of our emotional pain has come from relationships.” The hurtful encounters in our lives have taught us that we dare not trust. Instead, we seek out safer attachments to fill our yearning for deep connection. Things other than people become our primary relationships. It might be food, alcohol, drugs or pornography, or it could be something non-tangible like prestige, power or performance. We scramble to find something to fill the void.
The problem is that these substitutes don’t really fill those empty places. It’s not the same. We were designed to have deep human relationships and that’s the only thing that will really satisfy our souls.
Matthew 27:37-38 shows that even Jesus, himself, needed the companionship and support of other people. It describes how when he was sorrowful and troubled he asked Peter and the sons of Zebedee to stay and keep watch with him.
Not only did Jesus die to reconcile us to God but also to reconcile us to each other: “This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” 1 John 4:10-12
As Michael Dye says, “It’s relationships that messed us up and it’s relationships that will heal us.”
Recovery is learning to trust again so that can happen.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39
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