Letting Go pt1: Scalpel

Relationships scare me sometimes. I find myself questioning whether or not I am doing things properly. How is our communication? Am I giving you enough space? Am I pursuing you enough? How is my encouragement and openness? How are you? Am I serving you in the right ways? What am I doing wrong? I feel like I have flash floods of this type of questioning throughout the day which Satan quickly uses to fill my heart with feelings of fear and ultimately worry.

It is especially difficult because relationships are like a scalpel in that they are unique tools by which God is able to operate on two people's hearts in order to reveal, remove, and ultimately heal many of their innate insecurities and sins that deter the couple away from a more intimate relationship with Him. Relationships allow for further sanctification of the two members through which we, as His children, are molded and refined more into imitations of Christ.

But just like a scalpel, relationships are also very dangerous in that, when misused can leave deep wounds that pierce our hearts and tarnish them with calloused scar tissue. This hurt manifests outwardly as we seek to keep people at a comfortable distance and not let them any closer for fear of being hurt again. We displace any emotions and feelings of intimacy and instead remain in the realm of shallow convenience further limiting ourselves from opportunities to be loved by people as an extension of God's unfailing love for us.

Knowing the magnitude, importance, gravity, consequence, seriousness (thesaurus.com ftw) of relationships, I question myself a lot because the seeming responsibility sometimes feels overwhelming. Thoughts float around in my head saying, "God invited you into this, so don't mess it up. If you do, God will take it all away and you'll be alone again." It's crazy because in essence (at least the first part of) these thoughts are true, but Satan is so disgustingly clever in twisting these phrases to center around ME, not God, and paint a picture of Him as an enforcer, not a shepherd to the point where I subconsciously seek to take control of the scalpel myself. I look inward instead of upward for guidance. The danger in this shrewd distortion of the truth is that I don't know what I am doing. I could have been in hundreds of relationships before but it wouldn't matter because in the end taking control for myself would only lead to heartbreak as I seek to operate without any qualifications and with a heart fearful of a seeming god of pure wrath. And Satan wants this because the last thing he wants is our relationship to flourish and grow and be more and more like an imitation of God's love that is used to illuminate the often dark relationships around us.

And to this I say nope. I don't want to control this relationship and seek to direct it myself, rather submit to the authority of our loving God in guiding us by deeming what is truly good for the both of us. I don't want to go about blindly slicing through random crap thinking I'm fixing anything, rather offer up the scalpel to the one person who fully knows how to use it.


jbieb agrees.

thank you for reminding me not to worry through it all