[Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon]

Today I was reading one of my regular blogs (one of these days I'll add the gadget that lists all of the various blogs I peruse daily) and the author wrote about a friendship she thinks she should let go of, and how she is always the pursuer.  It's a best friend from high school and she just can't let go.  This got me to thinking about such matters, because I definitely have some friendships, primarily from college, that I find myself questioning from time to time.  There's nothing particularly wrong with the other person in each respective relationship, it's just that I am the one doing the pursuing literally 99% of the time and it can be tiresome and discouraging.

See, the thing is, when you... okay, I'll speak for only myself here... when I am always the pursuer I start to feel insecure.  Maybe the other person is just really busy.. but maybe they don't really like me?  If I quit bugging them maybe they would let the relationship quietly die but they are too nice-faced to actually cut things off?  For as awesome as Facebook is, one detriment is that you can see if someone responds to other people.  So, say I write on someone's wall, and they don't write back... I can see if they have written on other people's walls in the meantime, and if they have then I suddenly am struggling not to feel hurt. You are, aren't you?  Hurt when a friend ignores you but makes time and effort for other people?

What's really sad is that in some relationships I am the pursued one, and those are the people I don't make time for.  I do make time for the people I am pursuing, however.  It's a pretty sucky situation.  I wonder how many overweight / obese people tend to be the pursuer in relationships... I have a feeling the number is decently high.  So maybe that's yet another layer of why we turn to food... it never rejects us for someone else.  A piece of pie is never like, "Sorry, Tami, you suck.  I'm going to get up and walk off of your plate now because I'd rather be eaten by your husband.  I much prefer his digestive system to yours.  Suck on that."

It's ludicrous, right?  I mean, that would simply never happen.  I kind of wish it would, because I'd probably stop ever wanting pie.  But friends tend to prefer different people in different times / phases in life, so maybe you were their numero uno confidante in college (colegio?) but now they have a kid, you don't, and other moms just "get them" in a way that you kind of no longer do.  But you cling to it because you always thought you two would be close until your teeth feel out and cataracts claimed your vision.

Sadly, sometimes the healthy thing to do is to stop pursuing.  You can look at it as putting the ball in the other person's court, or just letting the chips fall where they may (yeah, two overused metaphors to be sure, but overusage means you get what I'm saying) but either way sometimes you just have to let go.  I've actually had to intentionally do this with a few relationships.  I just quit pursuing, and if that means we both move on and lose touch... sometimes that's just life.  And it's ok.  I don't hate the person, or have a problem with them, but I can't keep reeling in insecurity whilst trying to get them to love me.  Plenty of people do love me and it's ok, healthier, to move on.

Ultimately, I see in myself a constant effort to get people to like me.  I feel like the more people who love me and just can't get enough of me increase my value and worth.  I'm really learning a lot here, spiritually, because I've been reading through the Gospels (you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible) and I've thought a lot about what made Jesus such a revolutionary person.  Like, there's this one part where he's dining with a tax collector and the Pharisees freak out.  Think, basically, if Jesus was here today and he was sitting down to dinner with Elton John and Madonna... the fundamentalist religious right would be disgusted.  But Jesus engaged in culture, and he basically threw the Pharisees words back on them, saying that when his cousin John came, living in the wilderness and living off of stuff he could pick out of trees to eat (bugs and honey), refusing bread and wine, and just following God around the desert away from people, the religious leaders tripped out and said John was crazy and demon possessed and clearly not of God. Go figure, though, because Jesus was eating bread and drinking wine and dining with the non-religious people so that they could come to know God, and the religious leaders called him a glutton and a sinner and not of God.  I just love how Jesus put the Pharisees words back on them in that instance and revealed their hypocrisy.

Another cool thing, that I read today, was when Jesus told the Pharisees that they were whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside but unclean on the inside, unmarked graves so that when people walked over them it made those people unclean and they didn't even know it.  For Jews, to touch anything dead, especially a dead person, made them unclean.  The thing is, if a grave isn't marked then people would walk right over it and get unclean without even knowing it.  The religious leaders were like that- they seemed good but they were opposed to God, so people would trust them for spiritual leadership but then those people would be led astray from God without even realizing it.  I think this happens a lot in America, and the world, today.  Some of the very people who claim to be Christians are leading people, and people think they are finding God but they are finding religion and it's dead and empty and worthless and they don't even know they're being led in the opposite direction of God.  This isn't Christianity- it's demonic.  And it's sad.

I wonder how many "Christians" would despise and desire the death of Jesus were He to come today and not be the hero they thought He would, not busting up gay pride parades or tearing down abortion clinics and throwing all women who've had abortions into prison for murder.  God hates sin, to be sure, and homosexuality and abortion are sin, but Jesus didn't come condemning the sinners.  He came loving them, showing them a better way, identity in Him.  The only people He consistently condemned were the religious folks.

This has made a big impact on me, because I am one who gets so into something I find to be truth that I try to convince everyone else that it's for them, too.  I try to get everyone to use Gmail over Hotmail and Yahoo, Firefox over Internet Explorer, Facebook over MySpace, and my church and it's subsidiaries over any other church.  My intentions are good, but it's kind of sad.  I drive people away.  Add to this my issues with clinging to old friendships and it's really a mess.  But something I've been thinking a lot about is the fact that my identity is in Jesus.  His word, and the Father's word, to me constantly (when I choose to read my Bible and actually hear it) is, "Tami, I love you.  You are beautifully and wonderfully made- by ME.  I made you the way you are and I love you so much just as I created you.  I have so many great things I want to do in and through you.  Trust me.  I'm not here to punish, hurt, abuse or abandon you.  I just want to know you, for you to come to Me and talk to Me and let me speaking into your life.  I want deep, intimate, ongoing relationship with you.  Really, I do.  We'll deal with sin, for sure, but it's discipline in love, because I won't sit idly by and let you hurt yourself when I love you so much.  Believe Me.  Come to Me.  Let's walk through this life together, sweet daughter."

Yet, like any relationship, sometimes I cling to those words and sometimes I doubt them.  I see people with a life I think is better (more money, thinner body, etc) and I think that God spends all of His time with them but leaves me in the dust.  Or I know He's knocking at the door of my heart, wanting to spend time with me, but I hide my Bible under some clutter on the counter and proverbially pretend not to be home because I think I have better "people" to invest in, from Household Chore to Face Book to Tele Vision.  Pretty sad, really.  I think that the more I believe who God says I am the more likely I will be able to stop thinking food is the only friend who won't prefer anyone else to me, and it won't be so hard to let my relationship with food change.  I can put more energy into pursuing other relationships, like ministry and exercise and such.

We all just want to be loved... we yearn for relationship.  I think the imbalance of not recognizing our worth in God leads to a lot of messed up stuff in this world.  How does it manifest in you?

PS Per my last post, from Monday night, my toe is still pretty messed up.  Sad day.