Forgiveness

I am asked for relationship advice a lot. I have no idea why. I am awful at relationships. It is sort of like asking a sheep herder to set up a computer mainframe. In the past two days several women I know have come to me to ask for my help in dealing with their partners. The most PG is the one I wish to discuss.

This lovely lady has been dating a man on and off for three years. They were together for a time and she discovered that he was cheating. The details are vague and ultimately unimportant, but the end result is that they broke it off. Sometime later, through this man’s persistence they reconciled and began dating again. They were dating for almost a year when she found out that he was cheating yet again, and they broke it off. So they have been apart for roughly a half year, and again this man is pursuing her and asking for forgiveness and reconciliation.

She asked me what she should do and if I thought she should take him back. She even pointed out scriptures about forgiveness and various spiritual whatnots. It is a funny thing, relationships.

I asked her if she loved him and she responded with a reluctant yes. “So” I said, “The question here isn’t if you love him, it is if you can love yourself with him?” She stood there looking a little confused and a little angry. So I told her my opinion on this subject and it is as follows.

I dated a girl for some time and discovered that she was cheating on me, we broke it off, and I took her back. I missed her, I loved her, and I forgave her. Then, after a while, when I thought everything was going so well, I found out again that she was cheating on me. The second break was the hardest. You know the adage, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” I was so angry the second time, and I did all that could to drive this person away from me and out of my life. Then the magic of time began to heal my wounds and I began to miss her, and she was always waiting in the wings to remind me she was sorry and that she had changed.

I went to only source for expert relationship advice, not scripture, but my grandma. I sat at my grammy’s kitchen table drinking coffee before church one Sunday morning and told her everything that I had been going through and asked her what she thought I should do. Her response is to live and die by.

“Your question isn’t really about this girl or whether or not she has changed, it is about you. You see, people do change and she very well may be sorry and a different person, but the problem isn’t her sense of self and her sense of love, it is yours.” Kudos grandma, you are my hero.

“If you can’t trust a person when times are good, can you trust them when times are bad?” She continued. “Can you lay in bed with this girl every night for the rest of your life okay with the fact that you can’t trust them? Every relationship begins and ends with a friendship and the heart of every friendship is trust. Can you build your life with this person on quicksand? Are you strong enough to hold this relationship up yourself when everything is sinking? This girl may be a great person, she may be pretty, smart and loving, but can you look at yourself in the mirror every day and love yourself? The power to forgive in love and relationships is strong and important, but the power a relationship gives you to love yourself is even more important. ”

I sat there in awe. What great wisdom comes with age. Could I move forward with this girl yet again and feel comfortable in my own skin? Of course I didn’t listen and we began dating again. It lasted a few months and something happened that changed the way I view relationships forever.

We spent the night together one weekend to enjoy a day off in the sun. When I awoke that Saturday I rolled over and put my arms around her and it felt ugly. Something clicked, and somewhere deep inside me a little voice whispered to me, she has done this with another. You slept alone one night believing and trusting in the best of her and she was in the arms of another. We got up and I made breakfast and when she came to the table she kissed me on my cheek and it felt even uglier. Her lips were poison.

Here before me, was a changed person, the person I had always loved, it took a lot to get there, but here she was. Loving, kind, respectful, and caring. She sat across from me and stared back at me and it made me sick to my stomach. I had forgiven her, I did love her, but we could never be together. There was no way to trust her. Even if decades of an amazing relationship were on the horizon, we built it on quicksand. That is not what God has in mind for relationships. Not even close.

As you grow older in this life you come to accept that there are few “firsts” left in relationships. By the time you build a relationship with someone you know they have already been kissed, maybe shared a home with someone, maybe they have already been married. You start to see that what is truly sacred in a relationship aren’t the things that you share with each other in the outside world, but those hidden secrets of love and trust that are the foundation of any relationship meant to last. You wake up every day with a person, and simply because they are there, you love yourself. You know that at the end of the day, you can tell this person any and everything, they have your back. There is no question of trust. No question of purpose. God gives you your biggest cheerleader, seldom perfect but always there, always putting you before them. This is God’s design, the power of true spiritual friendship with worldly benefits. Not two halves, but two wholes, brought together to share life in your own little nook of the kingdom. Let the world say what they want, and judge all they like, you are not a part of the world.

So I looked at this woman and said, “There you have it, either third times a charm, or accept that even if you love someone that is little guarantee that you can be together. Sometimes it is hard to see the difference between truly loving someone and using a person to feel love.” She started crying, and I began to think maybe I should have worded it a little differently. She gave me a hug and told me thanks. Then she asked me for my number and told me we should go out sometime. It is a funny thing, relationships.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27