Irony = skipping over your daughter’s delayed post on the inner messiness that accompanies chronicity to write about the ups and downs of living with others in the midst of that mess. May also contain hints of sarcasm.

Or just FLAT OUT sarcasm.

Maybe.

I don’t always know how to do this relationship thing well during this season of life.  This season in which I’m struggling to even take care of myself, let alone children, spouse, extended family, friends, staff, leaders, members of our Body.  This season of infuriating helplessness against the forces of illness within my own body and home.  This season of endlessly failing to meet the multitude of expectations levied against me.  This season of overwhelm and short-circuitry and exhaustion and emotional anesthesia.

It doesn’t make for many Kodak moments.

I’m just sayin’.

If you’re a parent, particularly of a child who also struggles with something of a chronic nature, perhaps you understand the continual inner tug-o-war that commences each time a symptom emerges or the weather merely has the audacity to change.  The uncertainty of how to handle each new challenge.  The vacillating that occurs when trying to distinguish when to push and when to placate.  The second guessing oneself.  The weariness from the drama of it all.  The weight of critical eyes on your every parental move.  The unrelenting pressure to get every decision right because another’s life is riding on your addle-brained decisions.

If you’re a parent of a well child, perhaps you identify with the endless guilt you feel every time they ask to play a game or go to the park or toss the football or run to Target and you’re already running on reserves you don’t have and the answer seems to always be “no.”  The sense of inadequacy that emerges when you have to pass parenting responsibilities off onto others, knowing full well they will not be an adequate replacement.  The constant longing for things to go back to the way they were before.

If you’re married, or, even better yet, married AND a parent, perhaps you understand the occasional, shame-filled acknowledgement that you just really don’t need another person needing you right now.  The recognition that they’re right—this ISN’T fair, but it’s not exactly as if you asked for this.  The clumsy way in which needs and expectations bump up against one another, bruising on occasion with their force and weightiness.  The odd mix of fear and resentment you feel when you recognize you’re the reason you’re both living out of the negative side of your vows.  The guilt that creeps in, knowing you’re a drain on the relationship.  The indignance over losing your independence to your own body and knowing that you NEED the other in ways you never imagined when you spoke, “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

Living with others IS often both the direct result of living with messy AND the cause of it, is it not?

And so much of it has to do with all the eyes we feel are fixed upon us—watching, critiquing, judging, eye-rolling.

I wonder what it would feel like, sometimes, to live outside of the ever-watchful gaze of others.  To not fear I’m disappointing yet another person.  To not sag under the vast array of expectations continually placed on my knotted, aching shoulders. To make decisions free of pointing fingers attached to condemning faces.  To sit on the couch when I’m exhausted and in pain without guilt and accusation sharing the blanket.

Maybe you’ve felt this way.

Maybe not.

Maybe it’s just me.

But the reality, of course, is that relationships can be difficult.

And the reality is, as well, that relationships in which one person is debilitated in one way or another can perhaps be even more so. 

And in truth, as I reread what I’ve already written for the fifth time, uncertain what to say next, I realize it all boils down to this:

When you put all the feelings of guilt and frustration and condemnation and fear and hurt and pressure and shame and anger and worry on the burner and turn up the heat, they reduce to reveal the deepest desire of our hearts—

to be loved unconditionally.

This is, of course, what prompts us to make vows—to make promises before God and others that our love will not change even if our circumstances do.  Because we’ve sought all our lives for that one person whose love will have no conditional grounds.  We seek it first from our parents, then from our spouses, and then from our children.  We look to sisters, to brothers, to twins, to cousins.  We look for “soul mates.”  For “besties.” For our “brother from a different mother.”

But we’re all looking for the SAME THING.

A love that endures NO MATTER WHAT.

And then along comes the “sickness” which leads to the “worse” which also, in its cruel irony, also leads directly to the “poorer.”

And we begin to see that everyone’s love has a little bit of limitation in it.

And we begin to recognize that ours does as well.

There’s nothing easy about this love thing.  This mirror that reflects our grossest imperfections.  This microscope that reveals the most minute failings of those around us.  This crucible in which we are both ground and ground and ground until we are reduced to fine powder, one unable to be distinguished from the other, formed into one bold, new compound by the mashing and the mixing.

THIS is living with others.

There is only one who can love without condition.  All other loves are but spiritual disciplines meant to both reveal to us glimpses of that one whose love has no limits and brutally reshape us, day after day, conversation after conversation, into soft, pliable images who bear a better resemblance of him.  It is often said of the opposite sex (or of anyone else driving us crazy) that you can’t live with them, can’t live without them.  I believe this is what that process of formation feels like.  Have we not all, at some point, felt this same way?

Keira asked me, earlier today, why God would make us each unique if the entire point of Christianity was to become NOT so—to become less of an individual and more of a collective.  If the problem with Western thinking is that we focus on the Individual while ancient, Middle Eastern thinking was focused on family and community, why does God make us each distinct?

We talked about the idea that the problem with American Individualism is not that we are unique, but that we focus entirely on the Self.  Our gaze focuses steadily on the mirror.  We THINK primarily about OURSELVES.  Yet does the Word not say we are a part of One Body?  Does it not say each body part ought to not see itself as more important than another? This is the point being driven home—we are all interconnected spiritually. 

I remind her that my body only has ONE right index finger.  It only has ONE small intestine.  It only has ONE left knee cap.  It only has ONE upper right incisor.  Each component of each persons’ body is unique, yet interconnected.  Meant to be a part of a complex system of circuitry and respiration and life-flow and healing.  Meant to serve a unique purpose in a unique community at a unique time.

Relationship.

What if we saw this as true?

What if we saw ourselves as part of a larger body—not a body like ours—not a failing and fickle machine that attacks itself and disregards its pieces and parts and disintegrates with disease—but a body that functioned within its grand design.  A body with working circulation, working systems, working immunity, working neurocircuitry, working hormones, working joints and limbs, working digestion.  What if we saw the body in which we live—the Body in which we’ve been placed—our homes, our pairings and partnerings, our workplaces, our gathering spaces, our bodies of worship—as benign force, not malignant?

There are powers at play within the “body” that resides within my home—challenges that trigger at times the four-year-old heart within me.  Challenges that beg the questions—Am I worthy of love?  Am I loved without a list of demands?  Am I loved when I’m not loveable?  There are powers at play within the “body” in which I work regularly.  Within the “body” I was born and raised.  Within the “body” that gathers around the table every Sunday night in faith and fellowship.  Within the “body” that serves as my far-flung safety net.

We all have the same powers at play, to one degree or another, when we are living with others.

And we all have the same opportunities.

Opportunities to extend grace. Extend mercy.  Extend the benefit of the doubt.  Opportunities to practice patience.  Practice forgiveness.  Practice self-control.  Opportunities to choose peace.  Choose life.  Choose love.  Without demands.  Without qualifiers.  Without condition.

This functionalish living is full of both.  Challenges.  Opportunities.  To love well.  To BE loved well.

And in the process of both,

to be made to look more like Love, himself.

balance community disappointment expectation family motherhood parenthood relationships spiritual growth