Relational brokenness
What a tough place to be. However, I think there is hope, because recognizing you are broken is a great first step. What is hard about admitting you are broken?
Secondly, after admitting your are broken and in need of restoration, the hope is that there is someone you can go to to help you through it. Keeping in mind it might be a professional person.
I think in one way or time many of us have, need, will need to admit we are broken in some relationship. I think it is the beginnig of the road to healing and moving into interdependence and restoration. What about you?
We need relationships in order to grow spiritually closer with God. Unfortuantely, it is relationships that can hurt us the most. What has helped you get back up and risk again after such a broken relationship? Your comments here can really be a help to others.
- Written by Todd Baughman
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
For me, it’s been an act of will. While I try really hard to learn from my past, I absolutely refuse to be defined by it. And, I absolutely refuse to be an accomplice to allowing it to control me. That doesn’t mean my past doesn’t do a decent job of impacting me, but it does mean that I’m committed to rooting out where that impact is negative and doing everything I can to minimize that imact.
A change occured in my life when I read this quote on a church sign.
“He who angers you, controls you.” I’ve expanded that idea in my mind to include statements like, “He who scares you, controls you.” I’ve given away too much time in my life to being angry or scared by other people. I don’t want to be controlled by others any more.
In real life, that means making an intellectual decision to learn to trust others, even when my emotions SCREAM at me to do otherwise. It means making the intellectual decision to model my behavior and thought patterns after those who are more healthy than I am in this respect, even when their health looks insane to me. And, most importantly, it means falling on my knees before God regularly.
September 24th, 2008 at 11:37 am
It’s funny (not funny, haha) that this subject keeps coming up lately.
I find that I become disappointed in people really easily… and from that the judgemental side of me comes to surface. After talking with friends and praying about this (a lot), it’s been pointed out to me that I am trying to control these situations. We can’t control every relationship, and I think that the broken ones are the ones that we want to hold onto the most because somewhere deep inside we really want to slap a bandaid on it and make it “better”.
It’s become apparent that pushing these relationships away is so much easier than attempting to embrace them as they are, at face value. I also have to remind myself that God has given me grace, and I need to use this gift to push past the difficulties in these relationships. I also need to remind myself that I can’t fix everything all of the time. It’s hard for me to ask for help with this, even from God.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I was deeply touched by this blog and the responses. Trust has been such a hard issue for me. My life has been filled with so much disappointment with people either betraying my trust or simply judging me that it’s so easy to crawl in a hole and not let anyone near me. I choose not to be that way. I’ve come to a realization that there is a balance of good and bad relationships. I have relationships where I am strengthened and encouraged. Then I have relationships where I seriously question the sanity of the person and wonder if the person even realizes how they are? God has shown me through some current situations that I don’t know everyone’s story behind their behaviors and and that I’m making judgments. There’s reasons to why I act the way I do. Am I the only one who’s gone through bad stuff? No. So, by getting closer to God, IHe has shwon me that there is a reason for every relationship whether the outcome is good or bad. I just have to see God in the relationship and know that He is speaking to my life through them.