One, but we’re not the same

Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without

Well it’s too late, tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We’re one, but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other... ONE

— One, U2 (1990-1992)

The reality of this life is a stark reminder of how hard it is to live with others... and also in the company of ourselves.  Relationships, whether they’re with others, with ourselves or with God, are so often complicated.

I’ll get to relationships with others, soon.  Here is a note from a recent journal entry... do you relate?

There is a mirage that strikes over the memory, a place and a time in the distant past, or even in the immediacy of what has just been, and we go there and we write, words of challenge and encouragement, for there is no condemnation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There I was, just as I was there, imagining how hard life was, how difficult people were, how unfortunate the life was that had come to be mine.

Arching the back, clenching the jaw, a furrow on the brow, and no shortage of anguish.  Little was it known that I had a hardness of heart that could not be reconciled; not the way it was — not this way!

To all intents and purposes the life that was mine, the life that seemed so simple once upon a time, had become extraordinarily complex, to the point that I had no choice but to regret breath itself.

So quickly had I forgotten all the goodness that had been poured into what was my life, and all the reasons I had to be thankful.  It was as if there was no memory for these things.  As far as the presence of my thinking was concerned, the realities of goodness that had come to be mine were no longer anywhere in sight.  They’d been stolen.  It seemed I no longer possessed them at all.

There I travailed and couldn’t put a hand on reason.  There was absolutely no way back in the presence of my mind.  There I languished, forever, it seemed.

Until it was the time for the Lord my God to come after me and to rescue me from this Perilous Place of being where I didn’t even know I was lost.

Then it comes to life with others.  What swept us off our feet once again is now a mirage.  They changed or we did.  Or both of us did.  Again, we go to U2’s song:

Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame

When a person is at war with themselves, of course they come to make our lives interminably hard, never quite realising the war being waged within themselves is a tyranny everyone must endure.

Again, there’s that complicated reality with an embattled person — addicted possibly, under self-attack, writhing for reason, seeking it through filters of chaos, expecting you to wield your magic wand, yet somehow feeling like they’re the ones who hold the keys to the city of wisdom.  It is a paroxysm of irrationality.  Again, U2 and One...

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?
To the lepers in your head

Again, in this struggle in relationship where we can’t live with them and can’t live without them, both of us seem completely beyond any joy, for the very fact that every moment is conflict and loss, turmoil and despair, fear and mistrust.  Again, U2 and One... a double dose this time:

Well, did I ask too much, more than a lot?
You gave me nothing, now it’s all I got
We’re one, but we’re not the same
See we hurt each other, then we do it again

You say love is a temple, love is a higher law
Love is a temple, love is a higher law
You ask me of me to enter,
but then you make me crawl
And I can’t keep holding on to what you got,
‘cause all you got is hurt

“Love!  It’s what I give,” they say, yet it’s anything of the sort.  The heights and depths of hypocrisy and dread, hurtful irony, lunacy if by some other name.

I recall times in some of my relationships where, no matter what we did, we just couldn’t ‘do life’ as it was anymore.  Something had to shift for life to be bred into one or the both of us.  One or the both of us had to choose for life and breath and hope and peace.  One of us wanted it so bad, the other felt so threatened by it.

The presence of hurt in ourselves or another is the caustic feature of death, where all spiritual sight disappears into the ether.  The truth is we all experience hardness of heart to the point where we cannot see hope and we cannot be hope for another.  That, or our hurt is buried deep in hapless trauma.

The only way through, therefore, is to reconnect with love, which is acceptance and surrender and forgiveness and hope in the joy of letting go of control.

It is lastly trust, one and the same, within the goodness of God that carries us to a place of abundance, especially when we leave all our dreams, hopes, plans and desires to our trustworthy Lord — fully expectant that God delivers... because that is God’s nature.

We agree therefore with the eternal truth.  God blesses the hope expectant in pregnant faith, for gestation surely runs its course unto birth, much favour and life forevermore.

If a relationship is to live, both must want it more than what it will personally cost, giving love sacrificially, without insisting it of the other.