Hard Relationships

How are you doing with the hard relationships in your life?

Not the easy ones, the hard ones. The person you love and dread in the same breath. The one whose name puts a weight in your chest before you've even finished thinking it.

I've been wrestling with that question for a solid month now, from the counseling room to my own kitchen table, and I don't have it all figured out. I'm just going to share what I'm seeing, and I hope it helps.

Here's the verse that started it, and I'll warn you, it's an uncomfortable one.

"Evil people only want to harm others. Their neighbors get no mercy from them." (Proverbs 21:10 NCV)

LET’S DEFINE HARD RELATIONSHIPS & VICTIMS

Let me say up front, I'm not calling anyone in my life evil. The people on my mind aren't villains. But that phrase, no mercy, has followed me around all week, because I know people who show none. And lately I keep running into them.

And the pattern almost always has the same center to it. The victim role. Have you sat across from it? Nothing is ever theirs. Everything happened to them. You should have called sooner. You should have known better. You don't understand what I've been through. You owe me. You hurt me. You pay. It's a script, and they never break character.

You can hand them the truth as gently as you know how, and it slides right off, because the coat's already on and they refuse to take it off.

The victim role is the one role where you never have to change, because it's always, always someone else's fault. And here's the quiet trap in it. You start feeling responsible for a life that isn't yours to carry. You start apologizing for things you didn't do, just to keep the peace. And they let you.

The criticism comes with it. The finickiness where nothing's ever right. And underneath all of it, a person who will not, for anything, turn the lens around and look at themselves.

WHEN TO WALK AWAY

I've even had someone in my own family I finally had to release. And I want you to hear how hard that is to say, because I love this person deeply. I suppose it’s why I keep repeating my posts. Letting go felt like betraying something. But holding on was costing me what I couldn't keep paying.

HOW DID JESUS HANDLE HARD RELATIONSHIPS?

Now here's what I keep coming back to. We have this idea that Jesus was endlessly available to everyone, arms open, no exceptions. But watch what John writes.

"But Jesus did not trust them, because he knew them all. He did not need anyone to tell him about people, because he knew what was in people's hearts."

(John 2:24-25 NCV)

The most loving person who ever lived did not hand Himself over to every heart in the room. And here's the part that really stops me.

After the resurrection, after He had conquered death itself, He didn't march into Pilate's palace to prove it. He didn't hunt down the crowd that had screamed for His blood. He went to the ones who were His, and He let the rest be. The risen King over everything did not go chasing after the hearts that had already told Him no. If anyone had the power and the right to force His way back in, it was Him. And He didn't.

Love and access were never the same thing to Jesus. So why did we decide they had to be the same for us?

HOW THEY TAKE YOU DOWN

Think of a lifeguard. Every one of them is taught the same hard lesson. A drowning person will pull you under, not from hate, but from panic, grabbing whatever's closest and climbing it for air, even when that thing is the person trying to save them. So lifeguards are trained to wait, to hand the person something to hold instead of their own body. Because you cannot save the drowning by drowning with them. Some people are going under, and they'll pull you straight down, and you'll call it love the whole way to the bottom.

So we guard our hearts. Not wall them off. Guard them.

"Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life."

(Proverbs 4:23 NCV)

There's a difference between a fortress and a filter. And releasing someone isn't the failure of your love. Sometimes it's the honest end of it. Paul admitted as much when he wrote to do your best to live in peace with everyone (Romans 12:18 NCV).

Your best. Which quietly confesses that peace takes two, and you only control one of them.

DON’T GET BITTER

But here's the real fear, isn't it? Not that you'll get hurt. That you'll get bitter. That you'll release one person and slowly start releasing everyone, until you're safe and alone and cold.

The only thing I've found that works is this. You stay closer to God than you stay to the wound. When you release someone, your flesh wants to build a case against them. Scripture keeps handing you a mirror instead. Prayer keeps your hands open when everything in you wants to make a fist.

I keep picturing the father of the prodigal son. We always watch the running boy. But look at the father. He let his son go. He didn't chain him to the porch or drag him home. He released him, then kept the light on and his heart soft, so that the moment the boy turned around, the father was already running.

That's holy release. Not slamming a door. Not writing someone out of your heart. It's opening your hand, leaving the porch light on, and refusing to drown in the far country trying to save someone who hasn't yet decided to be saved.

You can love someone with your whole heart and still not give them the keys to your house. Jesus did exactly that. You're allowed to, as well.

CONCLUSION

So if there's a name in your mind right now, maybe today is the day you stop going under with them. Not with hatred. With release. Draw a line, write Start, and finish well for your own health and theirs. Let them know you love, but now, differently. It may help them more than you know.

GOD, you know the names we're carrying today. You know the ones we love who show us no mercy, and how tired we are, and how afraid we are of going cold. You know how long some of us have been apologizing for lives that were never ours to carry. Teach us the difference between loving someone and handing them the keys to our peace. Give us hearts that stay soft and hands that stay open, even as we let go. Keep us so close to you that bitterness finds no room to grow. And where we've been drowning, pull us up, and remind us that you never asked us to save anyone. You only asked us to follow the One who already did. IJNIP amen ♥️

(Check out my messages on podcast too)