Meetings in the Middle
The American mantra of every man for themselves and something about bootstraps appears to have resulted in a mental health crisis. Good times! People are lonelier than ever, probably as a direct result of our rugged individualism (no BLEEP). One thing I know to be true is that no matter how much work we do on ourselves, no matter how spiritual or healed or generous or loving we might be, people all around us may not be doing any of the same work. People all around us may still be totally traumatized.
Connection, healing, partnership, or growth is a two-way street. Happiness may be an inside job, but we’re still going to run across complete BLEEPholes or fall in love with real pieces of work. It’s important to forgive ourselves for our role in dysfunction. It’s important to try and be forgiving of other people and their trauma-responses, but I should mention that we also don’t have to go there in the first place.
Healing and change, having faith in God (or Good) is about learning to trust our inner voice. It’s about protecting ourselves. It’s about learning how to avoid pitfalls, quagmires, or broken hearts because we have faith that there is something or someone better out there for each of us. More than happiness being an inside job, healing, growth, and change is very much based in faith, and it makes no sense spending time with people or in situations where there is no healing, no growth, no change, no Good, no God.
Healthy relationships require healthy interdependence. Not isolationist independence and not burdensome dependence, but interdependence that smacks of needs being met, trust being established, and consistent, reciprocal, honest communication. Too many of us try bonding with people mired in their own trauma. We keep trying to connect with those who seem to blame everyone but themselves.
We know real healing and growth has occurred when we stop seeing potential partners or new friends as like-minded, wounded animals and instead start seeing how strong and sturdy we both are, how reliable we both can be, how tuned into us and how tuned into them we are. As we heal and grow, growth and healing takes place around us, because the people and circumstances around us change both literally and figuratively. Not everything is about an attitude adjustment on our part. Sometimes, as we heal, grow, and change, our realities have to change with us. Like a snake shedding skin, sometimes we have to shed the negative circumstances or negative people that reinforce old mantras or have no interest in growth or healing.
Sometimes, God (or Good) solves problems over long periods of time. And sometimes Good (or God) solves problems swiftly. Bad relationships often end in a lightening strike of dysfunction and bad behavior, because God is over it, whether or not we are. The best way to find someone who wants to be healthy and work with us on interdependence based on trust, healing, and growth is for God (or Good) to throw a Molotov cocktail into a BLEEPY situation where we aren’t learning anything, no one is growing with us, and changes have to be made, whether we like it or not. God (or Good) will just do us a favor, pulling the pin and pitching a grenade into the broken parts of our lives we are still trying to fix by ourselves with duct tape and super glue. Enough of this already.
I’m not saying that once we come to believe in Good (or God) we deserve better. We always deserved better, but we just didn’t have the strength for it. God (or Good) provides the foundational infrastructure for really healthy choices, behavior, people, and circumstances. It allows us to believe we are worthy of Good (or God) and then see it when it shows up in human form, ready to work with us in life, in love, in healing, in growth, and in change.
Some of the magical opportunities in building faith is first the opportunity to believe in God (or Good), then the chance to believe in ourselves, and finally, to have the opportunity to have faith in others.