Not their words, nor their actions, but their patterns define them... and us

Life is a long journey and age convinces us that we’re frequently given repetitive lessons in learning those things that God patiently insists we learn.

Like the matters of who we trust, and how readily many of us are given to trust.

If we’re Christian, we know all too well the necessity of trusting God.  It is our major task, and no matter how high up we go in worldly denominational ladders, no matter how many books we write, or sermons we preach, or people we impress with our knowledge, trust of God is tantamount to the whole journey.

But we often mistake this mandate to trust God with a need to trust our fellow human beings, and horrendously so in the case that we continue to throw beautiful pearls to swine.

The flow of life in relationships is stunning in the subtlety of its dynamics.  If we’re given to empathy, we enable the manipulator who will be drawn to us like a moth to light.

As persons given to the love of empathy, we simply must develop the ability to discern good patterns from problematic patterns.  Call it a healthy cynicism.

It is a loving thing to insist someone do their own work, and not to do it for them.  We all have a role in each other’s lives not to accept child’s play for adult work.  As adults in our sloth, very often we’re tempted to have others do things for us.  Let us be people who commit to loving fellow adults well by not doing the work of doing their life for them.

Some of this work is the work of change.  Nobody can change unless something in their heart changes—that they WANT to change!

Yet we often convince ourselves that we can change others, or at least support the change that only they can make.  If they’ll change, they’ll change without our help.  If we help them, we hinder their chances to change.  It’s up to them.

We’re all tempted to say the right things to convince people we’re serious.  But we full well know that our words betray our actions, let alone the patterns that need to develop for real change to occur.

If we’re in a relationship where there’s words of commitment without change, where damage is allowed to exacerbate and fester, without accountability, nothing will change.

The only thing that facilitates change is motivation to change.  They won’t change anything if you do it for them.

We don’t need to be the ones at the receiving end of poor behaviours and evil patterns to notice.  All we need do is observe.

We might find that our words of encouragement, that they cease putting up with abysmal patterns of behaviour, fall on deaf ears.  Not only is it the person who needs to change that doesn’t change, the enabler doesn’t change—they continue to enable—and there’s no sense getting frustrated that nobody’s listening.  At these times it’s time to move on and let the enabler work it out for themselves.

When we’re the enabler, we have the option open to freedom.  The only cost is to stand up and to enforce sensible boundaries.  And doing that, if we’re committed to letting them stand on their own two feet, which is love, is easier than we think.