How To Not Throw Away Painful Love: Three steps to redeeming a relationship
I must preface this topic with an important note so that there is no confusion: The nature of this post in no way is a promotion of or blind eye to emotional, mental, or physical abuse. You will not find the tolerance of or excuse for unproductive and dangerous “love.” This is a place of safety and advocacy, the promotion of peace and the fortress of Godly wisdom is what you will discover in the words that follow. What we are discussing is having the Christian know-how to navigate the relationships you currently are in, ones that you may experience a spiritual pain because of the God-level expectations and weight you have put on them. We are examining how best to give that pain over to God.
The greatest pain I’ve felt in a friendship was finding out that the smiles and words received in light were totally contradictory to the discontentment and whispers uttered against me in the dark. The distrust I developed in discovering I was not appreciated or truly wanted was a pain I have a difficult time explaining, yet it still teaches me, and I’m learning how to not throw away a blemished love, but help it heal and distance myself from its pain while still accepting its sacred parts.
It is said quite often that if some acquaintance doesn't outright bring us joy, we should remove it from our life altogether. I believe that thinking causes us to lose some beneficial relationships simply because they do not operate in the way we have created in our minds and initially desired. More often than not, we are required to let that relationship redefine itself. Instead of throwing out everything that hurts and disappoints us, we must reestablish how we relate to it to 1. avoid unproductive hurt and 2. summon God’s grace when in pain. Seeking to simply protect ourselves from hurt is not Christ-like.
The friendship I describe above is one of over eight years that I internally expected to operate in one way, even though that thinking was not aligned with reality. I expected a best friend, a trustworthy teammate in life, someone to share vulnerable issues with and celebrate life’s greatest blessings. I had expectations for her, and her for me, yet we never spoke up. Desires father our expectations, and expectations then father our assumptions. When we assume someone knows our desires and we expect them to operate in a particular way, yet we fail to voice our needs, we leave room for unnecessary pain. So as those "heart needs" weren't met, pain was introduced between she and I, and over time more hurt, distrust, betrayal, and disappointment were present than love. Leading to my request of the Lord “Please, free me of this unfruitful connection."
Curlfriends, know this:
Our minds create an absolute for every connection we make. Everyone, all of us, has our own personal definition of what a good, successful, productive, and worthwhile relationship should look like, and when it doesn't meet, exceed, or produce that created idea, then something must be wrong with it, right?
Not quite.
The problem with self-created relationships is that you will invest in an idea hoping that it will start to become reality. What happens when the relationship doesn't ever look like that? Is it all bad?
Curl check: Ask yourself why you are creating relationship paintings and comparing them to real life. What are you truly seeking out? Evaluate whether what you are requiring can actually be produced/performed/given by the other person? When we push hard on a connection to be greater than its capacity and more perfect than the willing participants, the result is hurt feelings and sometimes a tossed-away connection because its actual lines, brush strokes, and colors do not match what we have conjured up in our minds.
How to avoid unproductive pain & summon God’s grace
#1: Get out of your head and speak up
“I think we often opt for silence, willingly avoiding issues and letting wrong things go on unchecked, not because we love the other person, but because we love ourselves and just don’t want to go through the hassle of dealing with something that God says is clearly wrong.” - Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies
God knew that love came with a cost; because He deeply wants us and knows the reality of our sin-natured hearts, He became active and took on the excruciating pain of crucifixion to ensure our right relationship with Him. He fully knew that there would be imperfection when in relationship with me, and because of that knowledge He redefined our relationship:
Erica cannot handle the perfection required in order to spend eternity with the Father.
Erica is not able to be fully righteous all the time.
Erica will sometimes avoid conflict and therefore cower away from the courage required to be God’s child.
"Love is devastating. Deep love is excruciating. Disappointments come with giving our hearts over to another. There's no escape. We must learn how to be devastated...not how to run." - Jada Pinkett-Smith
Instead of God operating in the pain of unmet heart needs after the initial Fall, trying to pressure us into being a creation we were no longer capable of, or even settling into the defeatist thought of “I cannot have them in the way that I initially created, therefore I will throw them away,” no, He stepped in to reevaluate His expectations of relationship with us and redefined them with a better solution - Genesis 6:5-8 & John 3:16-17. Jesus was that better solution. If our Father, the Creator of heaven and earth, can take His supreme and sovereign initial intentions, and redefine them realizing the actual state and possibilities of our nature, so should we do this with one another as His children. If something has stepped out of bounds from what you initially thought it would be, and has produced a pain in you, this is a good time to speak up and reevaluate what this relationship can truly bring to your life. Not what you want it to bring, but what it’s capable of…
#2: Discover and respect the relationship’s limits
Put it in its rightful place and do not over-extend beyond its possibilities. We as humans can get caught up in a perfection syndrome that causes us to toss anything that makes mistake. God reveals in His perfection that mistakes are natural, as a matter of fact, they show how far something can go before it breaks. If you are pushing your relationships to a point of breaking - when you were expecting so much that you are causing them to crumble - you're operating outside of our Father’s actions. In His limitlessness, He understands our limits.
God knows that love is painful, but that pain is only to come from and for a purpose. Pain’s purpose is not to hurt you, but give you understanding of real love - to show you how to summon grace in pain.
We must look at our relationships in that light; step back, see all the imperfections, all of the incompleteness, and accept that there is still greatness. Accept the harmonious and sacred thing, even if it's just one thing. In those moments when failure is all you see, redemptive qualities must be sought after.
#3: understand right from wrong and love accordingly
God commands us to be like Him, to operate in love differently than selfish man. Stop seeking out perfection or even your own desires. Instead, redefine the relationship so that it is fruitful in your life - whatever it takes: don’t conform to or ignore problems, but offer grace. Don’t work to make the other hurt as you hurt, but distance yourself, and present solutions…remember that love takes the productive pain and grows from it.
Curl Check: Everything that hurts is NOT bad for you (even though it may feel bad to you); it just needs repositioning into its rightful place. Right now, that relationship may be taking up too much space in the wrong heart spot. You're giving it too much room, and too much focus. You're expecting too much and welcoming in hurt.
Well, what example do we redefine our painful relationships against? How do we practically put them in the right heart place?
We have Jesus and the holy definition of love - 1 Corinthians 13. The relationship actually defines itself from the very beginning. We must recognize that so we appropriately fill in its gaps with patience, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, humility, and gentleness. It shows us its boundaries, its faults, and its capabilities. At the onset, we see how much we'll need to put in and how much we're going to get out.
Curl check: look at your relationship’s boundaries. When carrying your personal expectations into it what wall do you run into - what goes unfulfilled? What leaves you empty & hurt? That's the boundary you’re overstepping that makes it painful, and that's as far as the relationship should be pressed. It's just like when you get too close to a fire and back away quickly, you then learn how close you can get and remain unscathed. Where does it hurt? What parts of the relationship pain you? It will begin to help you heal when you can answer these questions and take them to God for further direction.
Relationships ABSOLUTELY can grow and become better, but what we have at the beginning is what God has allowed for us to gain; don't push past Him...that's where unproductive pain enters. If you are years into a relationship, or connection of any sort, and are still pushing to get more out of it, or fighting the same battles of discontentment while consequently receiving unproductive spiritual and emotional pain, you have ignored the true capacities and limitations of this relationship. You have put it on a pedestal and pressured upon it expectations that it cannot meet; it's time to redefine:
They may not be a honest & close friend.
He cannot be your romantic love.
She is your sister, but not your trusted storm-mate.
Jesus stepped in to redefine how we related to God, offering grace, salvation, and a second chance, because the pedestal of purity first made for us was beyond our abilities. God knew that and accepted it, and did not hold us against a picture we could no longer replicate. He did not heap upon Himself or us the pain of unmet heart needs and He did not throw us away.
So, why is this an important lesson?
It is a part of how our love, compassion, and grace are extended toward others. We need to understand what relationships really are about and why we are relational.
When we grasp that they are ultimately for spiritual development and not personal fulfillment (1 Corinthians 13), then they will produce far more love than pain. Do not throw it away, remold it. Return it to Sender and let Him show you how much it can take. God says: “Don't overfill the cup of a human with the water only I can hold."
So…what has happened to my dear friendship of 8+ years? Well, it is redefining itself in a distant, healthier way. It’s not built on the pressures of being more than it’s capable of anymore. We are Christian sisters, compassionate and prayerful, but not overfilled with God-only expectations or false security. So as God continues to redefine for us how far we can go in trust and access toward one another, we remain in God-level forgiveness, summoning His grace as we keep the love and avoid the hurt.
I’d love to hear how God is helping you to not throw away painful love, but redefine it. Please share in the comments!
Smile, Shine, Love Curlfriends!
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I love you, Curls!
