Sometimes sickness is preferred to life in general. When you’re actually sick, there is a definitive progression and end. You start feeling crummy, get however ill you get, then start to improve and eventually end back at “normal”.Whatever that is. I still agree with Erma Bombeck that normal is just a setting on the dryer.
Life, however, presents ongoing issues that have no such resolution. Emotional baggage, trauma, and learned behavior patterns, all come into play. Consider how it must’ve been for Sarah after Abraham gave her over to other men telling her to claim to be his sister. To go back to him as his wife after that degradation. And it happened more than once! Can you imagine the lack of trust now in that relationship? To know a man you were willing to follow anywhere, who was the mainstay of your life as his helpmate, would cast you alone into the lion’s den, literally, without protection and would require you to lie. What a horrible way to build trust together when all he cared about was protecting himself. Wow. Sarah, true respect that you continued as long as you did. Across so many miles, leaving everyone and everything familiar and then having to cling to a man who showed you how little your safety, honor and well-being meant to him.
I cannot claim to be faithful to that level. In fact, my faithfulness to that type of a man is now over. Unfortunately, that seems to be the style of man attracted to me and I fall for the same nonsense again and again. Presented with someone who seems genuine, who seems to care, who’s going to be present and helpfully supportive, I fully dive in with my 100% give my all heart and soul to making them feel loved and appreciated, because that’s who I am.
Then the weirdness begins. There is pull back, not ghosting per se but a lessening of frequency, interaction and engagement. So the overthinking then kicks in. Assuming I thought something wrong, said something wrong, invested too much too fast, I’m left backing away, unsure of what is going on. Being challenged that it’s all my perception and not anything real, I smell again the stench of methane with a match not far behind. So the communication or whatever has a mild uptick enough to keep me engaged until it wanes again. And I keep falling for it. Again will blame myself, assume I’m over sensitive and they actual care genuinely because I so want to believe it. But the feeling of dread in the back of my mind and heart recognizes too well the pattern. And so the dance continues. I take up the role of deceiver of myself and do the work for them to convince me to stay close and wait and see. They can then claim innocence of wrongdoing, which they always do, and there is no desire on their side for true connection on deeper levels, just a desire to keep me showering them with attention and affection to my own detriment. And I fall right back into the familiar pattern as I’ve lived it so long. It’s just a different face, a new nuance, but the same feeling unwanted, disregarded, less than person I don’t want to ever be again.
I wonder at what conversation Sarsh had with Abram once she returned. Did she stand up for herself? Did she call him out after the king did, or just let that condemnation be enough? There is no earthly king in my life to call it out, only my heavenly one. But if the man I’d not attuned to His voice, he certainly won’t hear it. So I speak up. Now it is the dance of do I just disappear. Leave no margin for error in order to stop the merry go round. Do I take the chance that the pattern recognition is right on track and I need to separate myself to get peace? Or should I rather allow time to see if I am correct and it cycles again- how many cycles are too much a pattern and a warning to avoid continued painful one-sided interactions?
Sarah, oh that I could talk to you, hear your heart and understand. But God hasn’t shared those details. You are commended in scripture due to all you went through with grace. I don’t want to choose to go through more just to find out I was again a victim of my own forgiveness and lack of strong boundaries.
Lord help me set up pillars to you that bar the way for men like this that do not value your commands of how they are to love the woman God places in their lives. How they are to protect, provide and preserve and not forsake. Help me to have clarity through the familiar fog that threatens to keep me hostage to patterns of self destruction.
Ultimately Lord, don’t let me deceive myself into places that hinder me following you or doing the things you have planned for me to do. Guide my eyes by your Spirit to remain wholly focused on you and nit on the people or circumstances which vex my heart so, but keep my mouth filled with praise to drown my enemies and if possible, turn the twisted hearts to see you fully.
Sarah, continue to show me how trusting Him and not the earthly men, who fail regularly, can look.
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