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Vol. 2008 Issue 08 ~ August

I am finding myself in the middle of a tricky situation with a person who wants to just move on, when in reality, I know that we need to do the hard work of moving through. I want to move on, trust me. I want this thing to no longer be the background music of my day to day life, but it is, and it will continue to be for quite a while.

Moving on would be so much easier. Less painful. Less sacrificial on my part. On both our parts. Less convicting. Less controversial. Less mess. But I know better. We need to move through this one. Actually, I need to move through it even if the other person doesn’t want to.

Moving through will be difficult. It will hurt. (It already does.) It will require work, mental, spiritual and emotional. It will require little deaths. (It already has.) It will be a huge mess (it already is) but it will be a mess with God at the center of it. And I’d rather have a mess with God holding my hand then fake peace and quiet any day of the week.

I have a friend who has a precarious relationship with one of her parents. She is, at this moment, at this parent’s house trying to hash some things out that have gone unsaid for maybe ten years. She is moving through, not just moving on, and I am so proud of her.

I know summer is a time of vacations and undone routines and this weird mix of a slower pace but sometimes a busier schedule. I know that sometimes we even take a vacation from working on relationships. Relationship work seems to fall better into a season where people aren’t dreaming about the beach and kids are in school, for some reason. But you can’t take a vacation from your relationships. No matter how badly you may want to. No matter how sure you are that what your difficult/frustrating/high-maintenance relationship with fill-in-the-blank really needs is a vacation. Life doesn’t work that way.

So though your head may be in the clouds, and I’m right there with you, and things feel, I don’t know, more loose and non-urgent maybe, I want to challenge you to decide to move through and not move on in whatever relationship is stumping you these days.

I can’t think of any relationship Jesus had that he just up and walked away from…unless of course, he could tell the person’s heart was completely hardened to him. (In that case, he usually gave them up to God and moved on…) But in most cases, it’s our own selfishness that’s holding us back from moving through. We will be following in the mighty footsteps of Christ each and every time we say the hard words and pray that one-last-time prayer and serve up an act of kindness that just might kill us inside…basically each time we move through, no matter the reaction of the other person, we are doing what we are called to do. No matter how hard it may seem.

By the way, my friend just called…she said it was hard and good with sobbing and difficult words said all at the same time and yet…so, very healing. Like I said, moving through is worth it, no matter how hard it’s gonna be.

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2008

Submitted on : 16-Aug-2008