Category: Devotionals

I have been an imperfect husband and father. That’s not really a newsflash or anything, especially to my wife and son. There have been times in which I have really nailed it when it came to responding appropriately to certain situations. Other times, well…not so much. Despite the fact that I say things out of anger at times, occasionally throw my own version of a pity party, and obsess over getting to places early, both my wife and son have chosen to embrace me anyway. They do not just overlook my faults and aggravating tendencies. They have consistently loved me in spite of them.

Being loved when you’re imperfect trumps getting approval for doing what someone wants you to do.

It is really cool to have moments in which I do something that pleases them. It feels like I did something right, and that’s a good feeling. However, I have noticed that it means more to me when they love me when I do something that’s not necessarily what they wanted me to do. It’s not a constant balancing act like trying to please them. Actually, there’s no comparison to the emotions that run through me when one of them genuinely smiles in the face of one of my bad moments.

When I look at how I treat others, I can see the other side of this. It requires no effort to love and enjoy people who are doing what I wanted them to do. I almost want to label these people as “perfect”, since their actions seem perfectly aligned with my own desires. However, to care about and enjoy those that are NOT meeting my expectations demands much more from me. I even have a tendency to label them as “bad”, or maybe even an “enemy” in some cases.

Loving only when expectations are met is not love at all.

If I only show love to my wife and son when they do what I want them to do, my love is lacking. In fact, it’s hard to even call it “love”. I am basically telling them I am only okay with them when they comply with my wishes. It’s rather selfish to demand that people bend to my will in order to avoid me pulling away from them. Withholding love is never an acceptable punishment and it never successfully manipulates a person to “do better”. Operating in the absence of love is like running a car with no oil in it. It will break down. Relationships break down in the absence of love.

God’s love always is in the presence of our imperfection. 

In my interactions with others, I can see the reflection of how God loves us. It required a lot on His part to love us. The death of His son was required to overcome the hurdle of communicating His love to us and winning us over to Himself. His Grace covered and covers all the imperfections we can throw at Him. A lifetime of trying to please Him with “good deeds” could never match the overwhelming realization that He loves us no matter what.

To love others, we first must be loved.

To be capable of loving others no matter what, we must first receive love in the midst of our own imperfection. That way we can have enough love inside of us to give others even though they may not deserve it and may not even love us back. Receiving this unconditional love from God is one of the hard things we do as His children. We want to treat our relationship with Him like we often do our relationship with others: we refuse to accept the love until we’ve done enough to deserve it. And we want to withhold it until someone has done enough to share it with them. It never works that way. If it did, God would still be waiting for the first person besides Christ who was worthy to love.

 

Intimacy may be the most misunderstood part of relationships. I know I haven’t gotten it figured out. When using the word “intimacy”, some of us immediately think of sexual relations. The fact is, intimacy is much more than that. “Sexual act” is actually the third definition down when I look it up in the dictionary. The first definition listed is “close familiarity or friendship; closeness”.

We need intimacy.

Intimacy should not be treated as a option. It is a need. We are born with it. I do not know all the research behind it, but I have read and heard many times that children struggle when they are deprived of closeness after birth. They know next to nothing about relationships, but they feel a need to bond. We do not have to be cognizant of our need for it to exist.

When it comes to intimacy, we often settle for imposters.

Denying our need for intimacy is typically a result of shame, rejection, or some other hurt that causes us to want to avoid any further pain. While it can bring joy and fulfillment, it can also bring tremendous disappointment and heartache.  Sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth the risk. At those times, isolation seems better than the pains that can accompany intimacy.

Other times, we are so desperate for it, we put in overtime trying to get it. This approach opens us up to those jerks who are willing to use us and abuse us. They do nothing while we do all the work. And we keep putting up with it in the hopes that things will change. All the extra effort turns out just to be fake intimacy, at best. It’s not rewarding at all. Actually, it’s exhausting, or worse…it winds up causing big time trouble.

Isolation and playing the role of a doormat are just two imposters of intimacy. There are many others. Pornography is one. It offers all the feelings of intimacy, without any of the responsibilities. And it surprises us with all kinds of shame and hurt down the road.

Drama is another imposter. When intimacy breaks down, is absent, or fears make it seem unreachable, drama seems to be an easy way to engage others. Sure, it typically drags someone through the mud, or “throws them under the bus”, but it seemingly offers a way to connect with those “on my side”. All the excitement from the drama can feel like a worthy substitute, but it’s not. It dies out quickly, and never satisfies.

Another substitute for intimacy is criticism. It’s so easy to be critical. It requires next to no responsibility, no work, and no chance of getting close enough to get hurt. But it offers the allure of attention and interaction that may feel better than none at all. It’s similar to the child that settles for bad behavior to get attention. He figures, “Well, bad attention is better than no attention at all!”

Manipulation always thwarts true intimacy.

Most intimacy imposters require a specific behavior: manipulation. They all seem to attempt to get something from others without embracing all the necessary foundations for true intimacy to be possible. They skip over vulnerability, responsibility, or authenticity. Even isolation is manipulative in that it attempts to control others so they will not get close enough to hurt us.

Intimacy requires freedom.

Sometimes, the hardest part of pursuing intimacy is giving another person the freedom to make their own choices. We want to do something to make it work the way we want it to. That requires us to manipulate in some way, even if it looks like the “nice Christian thing to do”.

True intimacy is made possible through trust.

It just so happens that God is pretty big on relationships. In fact, He has worked tirelessly on establishing one with his children. Regardless of what theological or historical theories you aspire to, humans have been around for a long time. Despite how messed up we have been over the years, God has not given up. He patiently has romanced us like a young man who wants nothing more than to get one date with the girl that has caught his eye. And like the father whose son ran away in rebellion, squandering his money in the process, God does not force us into anything. And He is overwhelmed with excitement when He sees us headed back His way.

Trust is the foundation for the relationship with Him that he desires. He has not made it a secret that it is “By Grace Through Faith” that our relationship is established and maintained forever with Him. He wants us to trust Him, which seems plain and simple, but is very difficult to do at times. One way we can engage and experience Him is to catch ourselves settling for an intimacy imposter. When we do, we can make the hard choice to surrender our efforts to manipulate, whether it be to fuel drama, criticize someone, try to impress or please someone, or isolate ourselves. Surrender is a powerful act. It leaves us vulnerable, in the face of things we fear most.  It requires trust. In those difficult moments is where He shows up…not because He wasn’t there before, but because we were not open to it.

A while ago, I was struggling with something. I had noticed several people in my life pulling away, or so it seemed to me. I noticed several cutting comments others made towards me, or at least that’s how I saw it. It was getting to the point that I just expected it…the rejection. I was wondering what in the world I was doing wrong. Why was this happening? Some people in situations similar to this work harder to please others. I tend to say “forget it” and pull away. I shared my concerns with my wife.

She said to me, “I think you are too focused on what others are thinking and doing, and not focused enough on your own heart.” I paused for a second. My instinct was to be defensive, but, this time at least, I fought back the urge. I sat with what she said and let it settle in me. She was absolutely right.

Avoid the knee-jerk reaction to defend yourself.

When I opened up to someone who I could trust I heard something I did not really want to hear. This was not just anybody off the street offering an ill-advised opinion. This was someone who truly loved me. Coming from her, it was like an alarm in the morning, waking me up. It was irritating to my ears. But I needed an alarm to go off, and God worked through the words of my wife. Thank God I didn’t hit snooze.

When you are focused on the opinions of others, you are controlled by them.

As usual, the willingness to be open and honest about myself paid off. But, as is typical, I had put it off. I should have done it sooner, but better late than never. In my day-to-day interactions I had become obsessed with what others were thinking…particularly about me, what I was doing and what I was saying. Their opinions of me (perceived or real) had become my guide. It controlled my actions and mood to a large extent.

Dependence on what others think leads to a flimsy identity.

I had become dependent upon the comments, responses, and even facial expressions of others. Of course, some people’s opinions seemed to matter more than others. I was losing sight of who I was more and more each day. It was like a snowball. I was going downhill, and it was getting bigger and bigger as I went. Perhaps some people were being critical, but I most likely had been seeing the criticisms when they were not even there. I perceived others thinking what I already believed about myself, and it was not good stuff.

The opinions of others are powerless unless you agree with them.

As I pondered all of this, I remembered an important truth. The opinions of others is never debilitating unless I believe them. Before this snowball had gained any momentum at all, I had begun to let self-criticism take over my thought life. I was not resting in the truth of who God said I was: His adopted son, whom He loves without ceasing. No, I was not focusing on how He would look at me with a proud look, like a father at a baseball game when his son hits the ball for the first time. I had been focused on my failures and imperfections. It was only a matter of time before I got absorbed in believing others were seeing the same thing, and believing they were right about me. And what’s worse, like my wife had said, with my focus on them I was unable to see what was really going on with me that was causing the problem in the first place!

Once I refocused on some basic truths, I began acting on them. Things became clearer. I felt the return of the freedom I had lost. It was not easy. It never is. Walking by Faith is a hard thing to do. Things such as the opinions of others sometimes seem more real than the truth. And a focus on them can serve as a blind spot, causing us to stumble along the way.

For the third or fourth time this week, I sit down to write. It is easier said than done. Writing, for me, is a time to be open and honest…to share something real with whoever happens to read it later. Much of the time it is personal. Sometimes, I have been told, it is a little “too personal”. It is something I love to do. It is something I am compelled to do. We all have our ways of doing this. We have a deep need to be honest about what we are doing, feeling, and thinking. Sometimes we do it with a trusted friend over coffee. Sometimes it is with God on the porch, staring at the sunrise. I just happen to do some of it through a blog. Regardless of how it is done, it forces us to be honest with ourselves. It snaps us back to reality, which prevents spinning our tires any longer. It propels us forward.

This morning, again, there is nothing coming to mind that I want to put down on paper. I know there are big things going on in my life. There should be something to write about. My son is graduating in a few weeks. Wow, that is major. It is a huge transition for him, and for my wife and I as well. I am also busy with an important project. It is requiring a tremendous amount of time and energy from me. And there have been a couple other deeply important and challenging things going on.

Despite these events, I am struggling to write anything. I am just not in the mood for it. So, ironically, I am writing and sharing about how I do not want to write and share anything at all right now. That is a good start.

It would be easier to remain silent. Say nothing at all. Internalize everything. Make bad decisions. Eventually, stress and frustration would spew out in one form or another. That is no good for me or anyone around me.

By acknowledging how I do not feel like saying anything, I am able to begin asking myself important questions. What exactly are these feelings that are pushing me to be silent? Why am I hiding and acting like nothing is wrong? Am I ignoring the obvious? Am I angry? Am I sad? What am I actually doing right now? Am I too busy? Do I need a break? And what am I thinking? What’s driving me to feel and do these things?

Without taking the step to be honest with myself, I never get to the point of engaging those questions. Therefore, I remain stuck, and pay the price for it.

Looking in the mirror is a hard thing to do. Sometimes I just do not want to do it. Acknowledging that simple fact can be huge. It gets the door back open again, even if it is just a crack. It is a big deal to confess something real about yourself…anything at all, whether it is on a blog, with a friend, or alone on a walk with God.

I woke up this morning to a fight. It does not have to be a fight, but I chose for it to be. I could simply give in, but it will cost me something if I do. If I wave the white flag on this one, I will slide further into depression.

We all have signs to look for that show something is “a bit off”.

When things such as depression, anxiety, or anger show up in our lives, something is happening inside of us that is leading to them. For me, this morning, I feel a weird mixture of all three. I certainly feel “down”. I can tell it would not take much for me to lose my temper with someone. My wife, who has more love and grace for me than I can fathom, can attest to this, because I snapped at her before I left home to go to work. All over nothing, really.

It is easy to get caught up fighting the wrong things.

The fight I referred to earlier was not between me and my wife. Not the real fight, anyway. And it was not with my depressed feelings, though I really do want them to go away. The fight I am talking about has much more to do with the many thoughts running through my head.

Our thoughts can be a formidable opponent.

Without getting too specific (no one reading this really wants to know all that goes on in my crazy head), my thoughts this morning are a collage of events in my life. I am bombarded with mistakes I have made…both recent and distant past. Thoughts of how I have not been successful with certain things that I really wanted to succeed at rush through my head. Memories are recalled and replayed for me that seem to prove me to be a failure as a father, friend, husband, counselor, and other roles I fill everyday.

With all of this going on in my mind, I am exhausted before I even make it to work. I fluctuate between giving up and fighting back. I keep reminding myself, “I must fight.” If I do not fight, it will only be a downward spiral, like the one Trent Reznor described all too well (if you do not know him, you did not grow up in the 90’s).

Being positive can be a negative.

This fight is not about trying to be more positive. Being positive is a mind game we can play sometimes that seems to help. Maybe it does, for a while at least. Being positive is an attempt to fool ourselves with more thoughts. However, these are happy thoughts, filled with sunshine and butterflies and other scenes from the end of a Disney movie. The main issue with positive thinking is it has the same problem as the negative thoughts I described earlier. Neither positive nor negative thoughts address the core issue that is leading to my depression this morning. Trying to be positive only delays getting to a real solution.

We must capture the enemy and force it out.

In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul discusses a different approach to a morning like this. Instead of positive or negative thinking, Paul suggests taking the thoughts captive one by one (both positive and negative thoughts). This can get tough…very tough.

First off, slowing down my mind enough to pick a fight with a thought is hard to do. This will require quite a considerable effort. I may need some quiet, alone time away from everyone else. I may need to go lift weights or run. Whatever helps me capture these thoughts, one at a time, THAT is what I need to do.

What are your thoughts saying about you?

Now that I have settled down (this morning I chose to listen to music that I know calms me), I begin analyzing one thought at a time. What is this thought telling me? “Neil, you are an idiot. You are a failure. You do not have what it takes”. One key here is digging until you see what the thoughts are saying about you. A personal attack is required to take you down. Then, the next step is finding the truth about who you are and choosing to focus on it rather than the thoughts that do not agree. As Paul described, this is a process of forcing our thoughts to obey the truth.

What are your thoughts saying about God?

The deceitful thoughts also say untrue things about God. They usually do not do this clearly. It is usually indirect, so you have to really look for it. But it is there. And this is the true key to fighting your way out of a depressed morning like what I have had. What we believe about Him determines our view of everything else.

This is the real fight: trusting what He says is true in spite of what anything else, including my own mind and emotions, is telling me. Only through those interactions with Him can we embrace and experience the love He has for us, which is the antidote to “one of those mornings”.

I do not like to mess anything up. When presented with a decision, I do not want to make “the wrong one”. I do not like to get to a certain point in putting a new item together and realize I missed a step. I do not like to misspeak when talking with someone. I do not like making mistakes at work. And I certainly do not like hurting others.

Fear of failure is one of the main fears we all face. 

There are many fears that we face in life, but a few stand out as common and pervasive. Fear of failure is one of those. It takes different forms, showing up differently for different people. Some of us fear failing at certain tasks: work, hobbies, and other challenges we face in life. Others of us see this fear show up in a more relational manner, as we strive hard not to hurt or disappoint those we love, work with, or simply interact with in a social setting. Whether we are striving to avoid bombing a project at work or working hard to avoid messing up Sunday dinner for the family, fear of failure can control us. It can drive us into a frenzy, causing more and more anxiety. It can lead to panic, petrifying us so that we are unable to do anything.

Avoiding failure does not work.

One of the things that makes the fear of failure even stronger in our lives is that we refuse for failure to be an option. The more we try to run away from anything scary, the scarier it becomes. We commit to doing whatever it takes to avoid it. This is where fear begins to branch out and invade other parts of our lives. Fear of failure at work may lead to workaholism in an effort to avoid failure. This leads to the sacrifice of more important things, such as time with family. Giving into fear of failure in relationships requires us to be people pleasers, so that we can strive to not disappointment anyone and keep everyone happy. Nothing leads to burnout faster than people pleasing, and with burnout comes other things we do not like to see in ourselves: anger, hostility, exhaustion, anxiety, and even depression.

To overcome the fear of failure, it must become an option. 

When we fear failure and try to avoid it, the fear has power over us. It is in the driver’s seat. Every move we make and every emotion we experience is affected. Thinking we can control it is an illusion. For any fear to lose its power, we must choose to face it head-on. What better way to do this than to painstakingly make failure an option?

Failing does not mean you are a failure.

Everyone needs an identity. In fact, no one is without one. The problem is, we all have had experiences in life that suggest we are failures. I can easily look back on any of my mistakes and bad decisions and agree with what they seemingly tell me…”Neil, you are an idiot and a failure”. However, one piece of evidence is not enough to prove the case. I can give any one of my failures in life the power to make that call, but I can choose to disagree with what it says as well. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s possible. The hard part is finding another source for my identity, and trusting it.

If I am a failure, then God is too.

To muster the courage to face the fear of failure, we must have a solid identity to rely on. Once we have that, we can accept failure as a part of our lives and use it to our advantage. At work, if an employee is not trained well, and makes a mistake, the supervisor is as much to blame as he is. That supervisor not only chose that employee to work there, he also was responsible for providing that employee with what he needed to be successful. For me to declare myself a failure, I am not only calling into question a few bad moves on my part, I am calling into question the One who chose me and provided me with everything I needed in life. Yes, sometimes I fail to recognize and use those gifts. Yes, those are failures on my part. But it does not invalidate His choosing, His careful tutoring of me along the way, and the identity that comes with that (child of His, loved, valued, significant, gifted, and eternally secure in all those and more). When I am able to embrace that Truth, failure becomes something I just do sometimes, not who I am.

While a friend told me some exciting news about something that had happened in her life, I was carefully listening and taking it all in. When she finished, she looked disappointed. She said, “I thought you’d be more excited and happy for me.” She had taken a big step in her life, and my expression did not match the excitement she believed her story deserved. She was right! Although I was very, very excited for her, I failed to convey my excitement to her.

We might be surprised by how others perceive us.

I have learned, especially over the past several years, that my facial expressions, mannerisms, and overall reactions in conversations are lackluster in portraying exactly how I feel. I often listen and think so intently that I fail to let myself express the emotions that I have inside. I can offer many excuses, such as…”I’m an introvert”, “I’m not tempered to show a lot of emotion”, or “I just don’t do cartwheels when I’m excited”. Regardless, I have chosen to work on communicating to others how I feel when they share important, exciting, or even sad things with me.

There is a tendency to identify people based on brief interactions, isolated events, and past mistakes.   

There is more to me than a stoic facial expression, which, I’ve been told, sometimes makes me look angry. If I were to be labeled by a first impression of me, I might be labeled angry, mean, cold, lost, or constipated. Although I might be any one of those things at times, that is not at all who I am. I catch myself making this mistake with others. I find myself wanting to make up my mind about who they are and whether I want to be around them, based on short interactions, Facebook posts, or something I heard they did to so-and-so. I even do it to myself. I will remember a mistake I made 10 years ago and focus on how stupid I must be to do something like that. It was 10 years ago! You’re not stupid! Let it go Neil! There’s so much more to all of us than can be identified in just one or two pages of our story.

It’s important to read the whole book, not just a few pages, before making a judgment call.

I can pull a few sentences from the Bible that might make God look like a vicious, unforgiving, tyrant. But when I take everything that’s been told about Him, I find that He is not at all like that towards His children. When I read the whole story, He’s actually quite prone to forgiving us. He even chooses to not focus on our past mistakes. I can even make Him look like Santa Claus…”“Ask and it will be given to you . . .” (Luke 11:9, New International Version). Again, this is not who He is. God provides for our every need, but He is not a genie we can use and call on to constantly get what we want.

Knowing others, God, or even ourselves, is not something that can be done quickly. Knowing someone takes time and patience. It takes effort. It takes courage. It requires us to look past a rude interaction, a bad choice, or even mere words. Who a person is begins to be revealed over the course of many experiences. One’s identity can remain hidden for a few scenes, for many reasons, but their true self will be seen throughout the course of the entire play.

I remember years ago… a friend and I went out to eat lunch. At some point in the ordering process, he made sure the lady behind the register knew he would be paying for both our meals. He beat me to it! My instant reaction was to say, “Thanks! I will pay for us next time!” Nothing seems inherently wrong with that interaction. However, there was something off with me, although I did not realize it at the time. I was having great difficulty accepting a nice gesture, like the one made by my good friend, without planning to pay it back somehow. Looking back, I was having the same problem in other areas of my life as well. Even today, I see this tendency.

It feels wrong to accept a gift without paying for it. 

If I cannot, or am not allowed to, actually make payment for something given to me, I find myself wanting to find another way to earn it somehow. For instance, if my wife cooks me dinner, I might feel compelled to pay her back by cleaning up or taking out the trash. While those things are awesome things to do, my heart is in the wrong place if the acts are merely “paying her back”.

We feel weird accepting gifts from people, and God, too.

In this manner, my relationship with my Heavenly Father is not any different than my interactions with people. God says He has given me Grace, and it is not a result of anything I have done, am doing, or can do. But it just does not feel right to accept that without doing something for Him. We, Christians, often talk about how we “come as we are”, broken and full of sin, to Him and receive His forgiveness when we are saved. But long after that has occurred, I feel like I need to do something for Him, like work hard to sin less, or something. I owe Him that much, right? Also, I often feel like His Grace MUST have a credit limit or something, kind of like my credit card. At some point with all of my mistakes, I will have to do something to get the balance low enough so the card (which is me!) is not rejected.

Grace is a stumbling block.

While it did not feel right to accept my friend’s gift of a free meal, I needed to be able to accept it in order to allow our friendship to be based on love and not some messed up credit system. As odd as the title of this blog post is, it fits a real struggle many of us share. In all my hard work, striving to be as good as I can be, avoiding what I perceive as failure, striving to “love others”, and in doing all that other important stuff we know Jesus talked about, something always gets in my way. Something always trips me up. For a long time, I thought it was all me. I just could not get it right, so I kept tripping over myself. That’s not entirely true, though. What I keep tripping over is actually…Grace. God has placed Himself squarely in my way when I go down the “striving to earn my way” path because He knows I need to be tripped. It’s an exhausting path to endless struggle. That path must be interrupted so I will look up and see who tripped me. Although it often flies against everything that feels right, I need His Grace, not just good behavior like it’s some form of “payment”. And He does not need me to produce those things for Him either. He’d much rather have a relationship than a business arrangement. All I truly need, and what He truly desires, is for me to embrace His Grace…and all the wonderful, free gifts that are a part of a trusting relationship with Him.

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 9:30-33, ESV)

When I first started pursuing my wife in high school, she had no idea who I was. She knew my name (I think!) and a little about what others may have told her, but she did not know the real me. I did not speed up the process of her getting to know me. Instead, I spent a lot of time trying to be what I thought she wanted me to be, rather than letting her get to know the real me. This type of thing tends to happen at the beginning of any relationship, whether it be in a social situation or even in a new job. It takes time to loosen up and be ourselves. It also takes time to get to know others because they, too, are prone to this behavior.

Fear is the culprit here.

At the beginning of any relationship, we do not know yet if the others around us will accept us. To avoid facing that fear of rejection, we may assume we are going to be rejected no matter what , so we choose to push everyone away before they even have the chance to accept us. The other option is to assume we might be accepted if we work hard enough at it, so we do everything we can to be accepted…except for being ourselves! No matter which of those paths we choose, we miss out on the very things we need the most in our relationships.

We miss out on finding out more about ourselves. When we spend our time hiding from others, it’s not just others that do not get to see our true selves. WE do not get to see ourselves either! Authenticity with others helps us learn more about ourselves.

We miss out on finding out more about others. When we spend our time faking our interactions, we attract the same behavior from others. We also fail to see the fakeness in others because we are so focused on faking it ourselves. If we really want to learn who we want to be close to, we need to be real.

Authenticity begins with our primary relationships.

Chances are, if we are not being real with the main relationships in our lives (usually spouses, children, parents, etc.), we are not being real anywhere else either. Trying to face the fear of rejection with anyone will not be easy. However, if we are going to put forth the effort, those crucial relationships are the best place to start because authenticity that begins at our core tends to spread to other parts of our lives.

The foremost relationship is with the One who knows us best. Being real with Him provides the best opportunity to find out who we really are. Because of His Grace, we are able to approach Him in confidence, regardless of all the personal things we struggle with. In other words, He can handle whatever mess we bring up to Him. He never turns us away. He accepts us because He knows who He has created us to be (our true identity). He’s the safest place to be real.

A few things to consider as we ask God the ongoing question, “Who am I?”…

Choose to face your fear of not being accepted by being real with someone. A good example is being honest about how we feel. How many times have we been angry but said, “Everything is fine.” with a fake smile?

Let others see who you are. As we find out more about ourselves, we need to share it with those who we learn we can trust. But remember, everyone does not get to see the deepest parts of us.

Give others time and freedom to tell you who they are. To know how much we can share with certain people, we must pay attention to what they tell us about themselves. Actions speak louder than words. We must be real with them so there is more likelihood that we will see them for who they are. And a wise lady once told me, “Once a person tells you who they are, believe them!”

Discover who you are and enjoy relationships with others. As we seek to be real, some may choose to pull away. This usually says more about them than it does you. This is an ongoing process of trial and error. Being comfortable in our own skin and developing real relationships are well worth the effort. As long as the goal is to be real and honest with God, ourselves, and others, we will get there!

This morning, while getting ready for work, I wanted to share something with my wife. What I had to share was not a big deal, really. However, her listening to me WAS a big deal. We both know this because of my reaction when I believed that she was not listening: unbelievable child-like behavior. The only thing missing was my bottom lip being poked out and me crossing my arms.

There’s an underlying reason as to why we overreact to things.

Why did I overreact so ridiculously at the thought of not being listened to? The overreaction is a red flag showing me there’s more to this than I might think. This is where I often fail to move forward. It’s easy to just tell myself to “get over it” or “it’s not a big deal” and never attempt to address the root of the problem. Emotional reactions are always a result of something deep inside us that is worth our attention.

It’s important to ask why something is so important.

Another good question to ask myself is, “Why is it so important for someone else to listen to me?”. When I see my wife’s eyes wandering to something other than my eyes when I am talking, an initial thought leads to a train wreck inside my mind. First, I think, “She’s not listening to me.” Then, I think, “What I’m saying must not be important to her”. Then, the inevitable…”I must not be important to her!”.

We have unique ways of receiving and giving love to each other.

We all have different ways we enjoy receiving and giving love to each other. Some of us like to do things for others, so we like things done for us. Some of us like to give and receive gifts. Some of us like simply spending time with others. Some of us like to listen and to be heard (okay, I snuck that one in there).

We need to look beyond what we usually rely on.

When I look at all the evidence, I find that there is much to support the fact that I am important to my wife. She shows her love in a multitude of ways. However, I miss seeing her love many times. The reason for this is that I usually rely on a select few ways to receive love from her. For instance, I value listening as a sign of love, so I look for that a lot. But listening is not the ONLY sign of love! We often limit ourselves to receiving love in the ways we are used to. We actually demand love in certain ways, sometimes silently…sometimes loudly. If love isn’t shown the way we want it to be, we actually reject it! To be free to receive love from others, we must surrender our expectations, and that it is hard to do.

We need to let God love us.

Although God listens to me, that’s not what He primarily points to in order to prove that I am loved. Instead, he points me to Jesus (1 John 3:16). Jesus gave His life for me. The act of anyone giving their life for me goes well beyond my usual expectations of how others should show me love. And on top of that, not just anyone gave their life. It was God’s only son. This is an amazing fact, but knowledge of this love is one thing. To experience this love is another (Ephesians 3:19). Just as I must consider how to let down my guard with my wife and let her love me however she wants, I must do the same with my Heavenly Father. One of the hardest things for us to do is to let God love us. We are very good at coming up with excuses why He can’t, or shouldn’t. As long as we hold onto those excuses, we refuse to allow His love to wash over us and define us. Instead, we allow lack of love to define us as unlovable. From there, we are incapable of loving others and letting them love us.

As simple as it may sound, I needed God’s love this morning. It’s not that it wasn’t there. It’s always there. HE’S always there. The greatest step of faith we can take sometimes is letting down our guard, throwing out the excuses, and just letting ourselves be loved.