- Not The Only One!
- 12 Oct. 23
- Post#99
- ” Pearl Vision”
- Howdy,
- Thank you for once again checking in and being a part of this little online community. I have on numerous occasions spoke about me being a people person and an extrovert. I have met and seen people who work with the public, and they just should not be.☺️ It’s like they just lack the necessary skill set, and sometimes it’s like they have no socialization skills what so ever, if you can’t picture this,, just imagine your last trip to the DMV ☺️☺️.I will from time to time talk about love languages and or spiritual gifts, and I believe that everyone has something that makes them feel loved. And along with that, everyone has some giftedness, whether they recognize it or not, and whether they put it to use or not. Giftedness can be like a super power and it can be used for good or evil. Giftedness can be very much like words and they can build others up or tear them down. One of the things that I have observed with age is that sometimes our spiritual giftedness will change, or it’s a little bit like being a late bloomer, something that wasn’t there before, just shows up, and sometimes it’s almost as if it’s over night. It can also happen with Love languages as well. It’s like that you discover that you like something that previously didn’t appeal to you, or move the meter for you. If it helps at all think about some food or vegetable, that You weren’t crazy about as a kid, then later in life grew to like, love, or perhaps just tolerate ☺️☺️☺️. Personally, still not a fan of egg plants, something just seems wrong about it and it starts with the name,” egg plants”, ☺️but we aren’t going there, and I digress.
- My for instance is later in life, I have become so much more of an encourager, and if you knew me personally and my tough love mentality, you would surely know that this is a gift from God, Himself ☺️☺️ . I guess it’s just an old school mentality, where men don’t show weakness or cry, and that’s not the case for me anymore at all . I think maybe I have broken tear ducts or something, because I can be surprised about the things that I can get a little misty eyed over☺️☺️, again not going there either ☺️ . They say that men get more sensitive as they get older and perhaps that is it. Maybe there is some mystical power at play , that gets us to cry for all of the missed opportunities in life when we were younger and being to macho to show emotion. I have become such an empathic person that sometimes it just frightens me to death. I know that You may think that is a good thing and wonder why it scares me so dog on much? Maybe, just maybe it goes back to my selfish core of me first , that it just violates my consciousness , that when I move into other people’s pain, suffering and dysfunction, that , one I’m afraid that it may rub off on me, silly, right? I mean you can’t get cancer from shaking hands with someone, same principle at play☺️. The other, much more troubling thing is for me ,is that people will see what an actual softy I can be, and even without them trying to take advantage of that, I could still potentially give them the deed to the farm.☺️☺️.
- There is just something about being empathic and compassionate towards others. It can change who you are on the inside as you practice being kind and generous, you know the stuff that is supposed to be in our DNA, as God’s kids. Here is the rub for me and what lead to this post. I can look around all day and see hurting, broken and confused people, just stumbling through life, much like one of those trailer clips for the Walking Dead. I can be so filled with compassion, that it makes me think about and consider others, and not just that, but consider them before myself. I know that is a shameful admission , but its genuine.
- This gets further complicated by finding it so easy to love on people that we don’t know, strangers, passer byers,, the man on the street, or just anyone out in the market place. I called this one “Pearl Vision “, as in the eye glass place, because my vision can be so distorted at times. This is rhetorical, but why is it so easy to love people that we don’t know and we can have so much grace for them, and so little on the home front, or for the people closes to us. There are things in life that can and will be in inverse order. I can tell you that I never fully understood the premise of treating a whore like a lady ,and a lady like a whore, it’s worldly logic, but I have both seen it at play, and no, I’m not recommending it for a healthy relationship☺️. This isn’t Jesus logic about the last being first, but we have expectations of those who we love and are close to, and some how that often leads to disappointment and disillusionment. There is definitely an inverse property at play here, and it’s something that we need to desperately work out.
- The one place that we should feel the most comfort and security, should be in our homes and our personal relationships. After all,, they shouldn’t be pointing out the fact that you are carrying around a few extra pounds, or any other of your flaws, its a safe place, where they don’t see mine and I don’t bring up their ‘s. ☺️☺️I have observed on different occasions that those places can be some of the places with the least amount of mercy and grace displayed. I think that there is cute ,and then not so much! I mean we have all seen couples taking barbs or jabs at one another from time to time, and some of it is cute and harmless and other times it’s just way over the line, and unnecessary. The problem here is that there is some underlying problem that has gone unresolved for sometime, and they have built up a resistance to the comments and have a calas wall of protection around their hearts and emotions. It leaves others around them very uncomfortable and you think to yourself, surely that didn’t just come out of their mouth. This is when you figure out till death do us depart is not just a goal, but a race☺️☺️. How do we get to this point, where the person that we say means the most to us, garners the least amount of love and respect?
- On the surface, we all know that relationships incur an incredible amount of work, but we often forget that, and let that basic truth be pushed out of our heads by the daily grind or day to day pressures of life. Regardless of where you may find yourself in life, married or just dating, kids or no kids, full time employment or just pounding the pavement . If your alone time with your partner has been reduced to birthdays, anniversaries, and valentines day, your relationship may be on life support.☺️ I’m not talking about elaborate dates and fancy vacations, but you need that face to face alone time to decompress and have fun together. It’s going to look different for everyone and it can be as simple as long walks together after dinner. Life just has a way of bringing so much pressure, with deadlines and to do list, and possibly the kids schedules, that these down times become critical to reconnect. I think that maybe we should conduct some kind of research study to determine, why we have so little grace for the people who are closest to us. I believe that You could take any offense, regardless of its size or where it falls on the I’m offended scale and place it in a extremely similar setting and we would be so much more critical and hurt by it from someone that we know intimately, opposed to the average Joe. We know that we live in a broken world, with no perfect people, but some how we expect perfection from the people who we love most. I mentioned before about the Bible app and doing devotions with a friend or two, but what I have observed about myself is that sometimes I can be incredibly vulnerable there, when I’m not at other times. Last week I wrote something that surprised myself and that is a lot of times in our personal relationships we just expect people to know certain things about ourselves, based on the on going relationship. If your initial response to this is ” Mind Reader”, then you would be dead on and get a gold star ☺️☺️. I think at times we expect people to just read our minds and we have the tendency to judge them based on information that was never laid out or expressed to them. We want to hold them accountable for the unknown, well it’s known to yourself personally, but not to your partner. I will be the first to admit that is a high standard that very few are going to meet. The most kind, sensitive, caring and loving partner is going to probably score very low on that scale.
- So, here is a little bit of hard truth, the longer that you are with someone, you only have two possible options, and they are the longer that you are together, it will get easier to discuss any and all subject matters, regardless of how difficult and sensitive, or not so much!. There is a study out now by some brilliant Ivy league types that suggest, the more personal one on one times spent with your kids when they are small, makes the teenage years much easier to navigate. I think that this is true as well in our relationships, and the more time that we invest early on in the relationship creating a soft and safe place for one another to land, the better off the relationship will be in the long run. I know that different people will define that differently, but a soft and safe place, has to be some place free of fear of rejection, free of criticism, at least the none constructive kind☺️. Judgements should not be made and generally the person has to be free to be themselves. If you get to a place where those things are not present, then it may not be the right person or right relationship for you. And when I say right relationship, I think sometimes we take things that should clearly be seen as a friendship and nothing more, to a level, where they were not meant to be. When you love someone and you allow them into all of your brokenness, your vulnerable and scary places, because you have insecurities there, you expect for them to handle that with the same kid gloves in which you presented to them. You didn’t share some childhood trauma or past relationship dysfunction with them, for them to treat it as if it’s no big deal, but to let them know that , this is a sore sensitive spot , where you possibly may still be trying to work through , and possibly still have certain things trigger that for you. We all have these past traumas that we have experienced and often never healed from. They present themselves as a scabs, just waiting to be scratched open and to have all of the nasty infection ooze out onto someone new, because it was never healed, but left to fester and grow. Things that are healed, don’t still fester with infection.
- I will say that this imbalance presents itself as a little bit of a dilemma , but it’s not something on some huge Insurmountable mountain that can’t be overcome. I think that it all starts with grace, and it’s true that if you have never experienced grace yourself then you will never be free to give it away. Then I think that it goes to mindset and remembering what this person means to you and the space that you have allowed them to take up in your life. This isn’t some casual connection from work, but someone who you have been vulnerable with and shared things with that most will never get to know about you. There must be perspective, first and foremost that none of us are perfect and regardless of how hard we try, we all drop the ball from time to time. It’s just inevitable and a part of life and being human, we fail from time to time. If we are being logical in our approach, we would have to wonder, why they shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt, when we so graciously give it and grant it to lesser friends and acquaintances. Finally there has to be understanding and that’s to the point where you step into their shoes and see if you get a blister or not ☺️☺️. I’m not going to mention patience, because that should just be an automatic given. I think far to often we have a tendency to overlook that we aren’t always a pic nic ourselves. This whole thing with the Pearl Vision , has to be something that you see with your eyes, and knowing that sometimes our eyes will lie to us and we aren’t always seeing everything or in the proper perspective, but we have to know and experience in our souls that what we are sharing is genuine, honest and the giving of our best, and that we know on certain days will still fall way short of what it needs to be. We just need to be gentle with one another and remember that it is about the journey, and the person that You have chosen to share that with deserves all of the love and respect that you can muster.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
- Reply
- ,
- Reply All
- or
- Forward
Thank you.Got it.Cool.Send
