The myth of "protecting ourselves"

So is 2013 going to be your best year ever? I told you I had more ideas of how to get unstuck and moving toward the peace and joy you were born for! So here’s another life changing perspective…if you’ll apply it!
Have you ever been hurt? Betrayed, let down, used? Have you ever had your heart broken? Or had someone you trusted implicitly to take care of you do something horrible? Yeah, me too. I imagine we all have in one way or another, maybe in really tragic ways. We all know pain and disappointment on some level.  Even if you’ve forgiven, which I hope you have, you remember the heartache.
Something interesting happens when we get hurt. Often we don’t even realize it happens but I’ve seen it over and over as I help people learn to live with peace and joy. Little by little we close off our hearts. It can take many forms such as numbing our emotions, ignoring our feelings, brushing it off, or just flat out refusing to trust or be vulnerable again. All in the name of “protecting ourselves”from further hurt or pain. But the truth is we still hurt, in fact these self protective measures, in of themselves, hurt.
Let me share a true story. It could apply to so many of us, and to ANY relationship, but here’s her story. There was a woman. She was wife and mother with a good life, success, blessings…Yet she’d been hurt. Just like you there’d been childhood pains, learning to trust and love, learning to love herself and she was making great progress until the person she loved most sinned. While she tried to love and support husband she also felt betrayed and devastated. She turned to her Heavenly Father, her best friend, and her mentor. Her husband got help, they even sought marriage mentoring. As the months passed her husband repented and healed. She forgave, sincerely and often. In short, they made it through. In fact their marriage actually became better than ever in many ways, yet something still wasn’t quite right. As the months went on this woman noticed she only loved and opened herself up to a certain extent. She held back just a little in small almost unnoticeable ways but she realized she was holding back nonetheless. Holding back her full love, her full connection with him, full openness and vulnerability that creates true unity and connection in a marriage. As she and I spoke she began to see the walls she had built around herself, she began to acknowledge the fear she’d developed of ever being hurt again, she began to be honest about the pain and fear she still held inside. She begun to be honest about the price she paid for that pain and fear.
You see she was the one still hurting. The “walls” and “protection mechanisms” didn’t actually keep her safe. They wouldn’t actually save her from pain if her husband sinned again! If he did sin again it would still hurt, but while he was there loving her all her self protection habits were actually hurting her, right then! Pain and fear hurt. End of story. Any time we withdraw, cut ourselves off from love, withhold love or anything else it hurts! There is actually a 100% guarantee of pain! And the ironic thing is what we think we are creating is safety and love! The truth is safety and love cannot be created from pain and fear, it’s not even possible.
So what are we vulnerable humans to do? Love! Love anyways! Love despite the human frailties and weaknesses around us. Here’s the deal, (I’ll tell you what I told this sweet woman that frankly changed everything for the good for her as she had the faith to give it a try), remember how I said that pain and fear of more pain are a 100% guarantee for pain? Yet what we really want is connection and love? Well

 the only way to get connection and love is to put down the pain

and fear and be vulnerable, to truly connect.

BUT WAIT! That might hurt too! Yep, it might. Fear and closing ourselves off bring a 100% guarantee we’ll hurt and feel lonely and unloved. BUT if we open ourselves back up, if we are vulnerable and love again it’s true we may get hurt again, but we may also find love and connection. We may also find joy. In fact, that’s the only possibility for joy, happiness, bliss. At least when we open ourselves up and love and feel fully we might just get exactly what we want.

Okay, if this post applies to you you most likely don’t like what I just said! In fact your heart may even be racing and your brain screaming “What the heck is this crazy lady saying!?” A small disclaimer: if you are being beaten, etc. I am not saying go back and “love” and get beaten more. Or any other such application. I am saying as we go through life and experience disappoints and pain we can close off without really realizing it and that in and of itself is painful. If we’ll be honest about ways we’ve shut off our emotions or closed ourselves off and choose to open ourselves back up healing can begin. We are all human, we all make mistakes, we all sin and sometimes we hurt those we love. I know I have. But if we’ll practice giving each other room to be human and learn and grow and just try to love each other through it frankly we feel peace and comfort because that’s what Christ does for us. And really aren’t we all just trying to be more like Him?
Oh and as for the end of the story…they lived happily ever after! Really. As she chose to open her heart practiced trusting and fully giving and receiving love from her husband again she found a marital union and connection better than she’d ever dreamed of!

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