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Family

I Carry Your Heart

This week I experienced just how profoundly wonderful it is to have someone that you can call at 4:30 in the morning. Someone who not only answers the phone, but runs to where you need her to be at that particular moment. I write and teach a lot on family and usually I am talking about the parent-child relationship, but today I have been reflecting on the relationships that we have with people that are so strong and so close that they have become family.

I think most of us know a lot of people, even if we just know them in passing. We hear someone mention a name and we have a face and an experience to put with it. I heard once that the brain can recognize something like a thousand different faces. We have the capacity to know a lot of people, but we do not bond with each person that we know. A bond is something much, much more.

The people that we bond with are given pieces of our heart, of our person. The bigger the bond, the bigger the piece and the more irrevocably theirs the piece becomes. When you are with someone who possesses a piece of your heart, you feel complete, loved, known, whole. But, when you lose someone who possesses a piece of your heart, you feel incomplete and not a little bit lost.

I spend a lot of time talking about the bond we have with Christ through the indwelling of His Spirit, the bond that is shared in a marriage, and the bond that is shared between parent and child. But everything that I teach on protecting, deepening, and strengthening those bonds is just as applicable to the other bonds we share with people. And applying such things to these relationships is incredibly important because when these bonds are broken, our hearts are irrevocably broken too.

I have pieces of my heart that I have given away, never gotten back, and thus remain fractured and incomplete over. I still grieve these relationships, but I use this grief as a reminder to protect the bonds that I still have and to use discernment in forming new ones. Discernment is not the same as guardedness. Trust me, I did that for a very long time. I shut people out, kept them at arm’s length, and guarded myself from potential hurt. Unfortunately, I also guarded myself from potential joy in the process. No, discernment is listening to your heart, to your mind, and to your spirit when choosing the people that you spend time with, that you value, and that you give your heart to.

When I stop and listen to my heart, mind, and spirit now, I can sense my kindred spirits, my soul mates, the sisters of my heart. I thoroughly love each one of them. They are sisters that were not born into that role, but who have claimed it nonetheless. They are the ones that I can call in a crisis at 4:30am and know that they will come running. And they are so very special to me.

For them, I dedicate this poem by e.e. cummings.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Marriage

The Sigh Heard Round the World

Into the middle of a group of women lamenting their romantic failures walks Jerry Maguire ready to claim his woman. In this iconic scene of a humble and sincere declaration of love comes the infamous line, “You complete me.”

Women around the world let out a collective *sigh*.

That is what we think we want.

To have a man need us. To have him realize that we are his other half, that life would not be whole without you. You want to complete him.

A truly romantic, fantastical notion.

*sigh*

But not at all based in reality. And women truly don’t want it either. Not really.

We need to be needed. We strive to be important, significant, irreplaceable. But to complete someone? Really? You want to hitch your wagon to that half-developed star?

Lifelong relationships will only work between two full-people, not two half-people. These people complement one another. They don’t complete one another.

It was the whole point of another iconic romantic movie, “The Runaway Bride”. It’s what the whole deal with the eggs symbolized. Julia Roberts’ character was meandering through life as a half-person, taking up with different people hoping that they would complete her. It wasn’t until she met Richard Gere’s character that she was faced with the reality of her existence. She was so completely clueless as to who she was as an individual that she couldn’t even figure out how she liked her own eggs cooked.

Do you know how you like your eggs cooked?

Do you have your own set of values and opinions and experiences and emotional reactions firmly planted, making up who you are as an individual? Or are you a reed on the riverbank, bending whichever direction the wind takes you?

I know that it can be scary to look into yourself and ask “who am I?” But, it must be done. No one else can tell you what you think, what you feel, or who you are. You must decide what makes you, you.

Only when you are a complete person, in and of yourself, are you then ready to couple up with someone else. Preferably, another complete person because otherwise you’ll be spinning your proverbial wheels.

Throw out the dependence. Veto the co-dependence. Overrun the independence too. Instead, adopt an interdependence, in which you come together and allow the other person’s strengths to complement your weaknesses.

Find a way to *sigh* over the ways in which you are a match. Maybe one of you is level-headed while the other is passionate and headstrong. Maybe one of you is detail-oriented while the other keeps their eyes on the big picture. Maybe one of you is process-oriented while the other is people-oriented. Maybe one of you is a thinker while the other is a feeler.

The one caveat that I want to throw into this whole love-fest is that you will never, nor should you ever, find another person to fill the role that God is meant to have in your life. It is only God who can truly ‘complete’ you. He knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. He has a plan for your life if you will let Him guide you, and these plans are much, much better than anything you have for yourself. He knows what makes you tick, what makes you smile, what makes you feel fulfilled and happy. It is with Him, and with Him only, that you should be dependent because He is the one who possesses your next breath, who holds the keys to the treasure of blessings waiting to be poured upon you, who carries in His hand every tear that you have ever wept, and who died to be your Savior.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of love that makes me truly and deeply *sigh*.