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read between the lines
any future to this past? the church i've been attending lately keeps having this phrase on the front of its brochure every week: "finish well". i know they meant finish life's race towards christ well, but yesterday it just took on a whole new meaning for me.there are some friendships in life that start out rocky, but over time gain ground and are retained and upkept reasonably well. and then there are others that start on good footing, but over time crumble and disappear. i know some people who have gone through this tell me i can look back and say we did have some pretty good times and just appreciate those things and "leave out all the rest", but i just can't quite get over these types of friendships, especially if they ended with a question mark, as if there were loose ends to tie up that were left untied. i mean, how on earth can you get over nehemiah 12's penultimate chapter of celebration if you knew the ending in chapter 13 didn't leave it on a happy note? or how can you rest easy and smile with ryan and marissa in the early episodes of season 3 if you knew he was going to end up with someone else and she was going to get killed off at the finale? i cannot fathom going, "oh, the israelites had a great time because they celebrated on a grand scale in chapter 12 and all was well, and nevermind the fact that in the end they deviated from god's law of purification from foreigners." even in following passages, they had the future promise of reconciliation with god to look forward to, not the past. i find it much easier to put the above advice into practice for those friendships that ended on a clean break with proper goodbyes. but for those that ended abruptly, with no clear reasons and no transition phases...they leave me very unsettled, when i actually let myself think (or am reminded) of them. which is why there are times i wish i had never gotten to know certain people if i knew we weren't going to "finish well". yes, i would rather not have known these people so deeply had i known they were going to hurt me so badly in the end. but of course, we don't. we end up finding out each other's pet peeves and stances on heart-to-heart issues. but here's the question: is this the end yet? will god, in time, come and reconcile us to each other? or is this going to end the easy man's way where everyone just ends up in heaven after we die and go..."yeah, i finally forgive you, after like, a gazillion millenniums because i see and understand everything in its completion now," but when i was alive i never made amends with you nor accepted your apologies. and while i was living on earth, having kids who had their own kids, i kind of forgot about you, while you grew old and still had that scar in your heart that never quite healed all those eighty years of your life." i don't want to do this (working on new friendships) again. it's so ironic that sometimes i'm just sick of developing friendships and starting over in my life and yet there are times where i've felt so alone and foreign to human life that i knew i needed to have friends. because i know history will repeat itself, in small but impactful percentages. i've always said that making friends is the easy part, 'cause no one knows who you are (and you don't really know the other person as well), but keeping friends is the difficult part because, over time as you both get to know more about each other, one of you might lose your level of tolerance for less desirable characteristics either of you possesses. granted, there are some friendships that just seem to take on lives of their own and just go along smoothly because we're both on the same wavelength and therefore the level of comfort is there (thus lessening tension and disconnect). but most friendships will eventually hit a major bump in the road along the way over some kind of disagreement about something. and whether the friendship becomes stronger than before, or reduced to nothing, really depends on how both parties choose to react -- whether they choose to reconcile or "agree to disagree", or whether they choose to hold a grudge or give up on the friendship. and there is only so much one can do, if the other party chooses to severe ties. the worst case scenario is, one party has no idea why while the other party does but withholds the information. if i am the latter, the problem is as good as solved because i hate to see a good friendship go to waste, no matter how much of a beating it has taken. but if i am the former, there is nothing i can do, after having done all that is in my capacity to do. and it is this undone helplessness that irks me. thus i am reminded once again that i am not in control of my life, god is. speaking of control, while i was debating in the bath last month about whether i was ever in control of anything here on earth, including my life, i was reminded that of this i am in control of: my resolve. (some call it self-control or the will.) and although it was something that had to be (and still has to be) trained, this is the one thing god has allowed us to control, which sets into effect our free will and this is the one thing i can change while i wait in uncertainty. |
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