Relationships with Words

This post feels a bit heavy-handed on “words” — but given that the physical tethers have been stretched thin during COVID, words are often all we have to go on in our relationships.

I can be a vulnerable person, or at least come off as such, in the way I use written word to process feelings. When I feel prolonged dissatisfaction, shame or sadness, I often work my way through and rise above them by wrestling with words. It’s like being a broody hen, who feels all sorts of ways and sits on her eggs until they have hatched. My words are my eggs, an expression of myself. I share those words because I know that the feelings I have are not singular to my experience. I share them because it does my own soul good to hear, “me too.” My writing is the way God has given me to open my own heart to others so that I and they can feel seen, known, and understood and can all feel a little less alone in life’s struggles.

While my feelings may not be unique, and my expression of them may draw some people close, I can also inadvertently push away people who experience the public vulnerability of others as manipulation, weakness or groveling for attention. Some people think the hard stuff should be worked out in private. To those people reading whom I make uncomfortable or angry, I’d like to say that my writing isn’t put forth to change your mind, influence your actions or evoke your emotions. It’s not written in judgement of you. It’s held up as a mirror to myself so that I can do better. If my egg words hatch out and poop all over your patio, the rain will wash it away. Go split some logs, get super crafty or take a long run and work things out the way that best suits you.

That said, I think we have all been suffering relationally over words. This past year I’ve been dissecting what makes my own experiences of rejection so wounding and what it is that’s being rejected. I’ve asked, 1) was it my idea that was rejected, 2) was it my voice (my way of expressing my thoughts and feelings) that was rejected, or 3) was it me that was rejected? Initially I thought being able to categorize the rejection mattered a lot. I treated it as a way to save face or feel less small and hurt. Surely, they do still love me, but they just don’t like the way I express myself.

I’ve grown quieter as I’ve realized that my own heart cannot distinguish between the pain of personhood rejection and growing relational divide over my thoughts or personality. The nature of the rejection doesn’t ultimately matter because it all feels the same. It all results in distance when love is not left on the table. It’s increasingly difficult to decipher because the deepening narrative in our time is that we are our thoughts and beliefs, and we must continuously expound upon those so that people can decide if they are indeed our people. It’s especially disappointing when people assume they know all about us and everything we stand for based on a small cluster of words. Everything is too loaded these days. We can’t speak and hear with nuance or depth when we’re only keyed into slogans.

In attempting to differentiate myself from my words, I can’t draw the conclusion that the things I say and how I say them don’t actually matter. Quite the opposite. We should use words with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness gentleness and self-control, and we should try to be aware that our words, for some people, carry meanings and wound in ways we don’t intend. If those folks give us a chance, we can apologize for the unintended injury. Each of us is a human soul, wrapped in a physical form, placed in a cultural environment during a short segment of a timeline of social, political, economic and religious movements. It’s our responsibility to read the room and check the attitude of our words with the attitude of Christ.

We should also listen with these very same attitudes. We should strive to hear beyond the context through which they were delivered (timeline, culture, physical form) to know and understand the heart expressing the words. Then, we should continue to recognize and affirm the loveliness and dignity of God’s creation even when we most fervently disagree. In those situations where we disagree, after searching for nuance, it’s absolutely worth the struggle to still leave love on the table so that when we must reject the words, our family and friends know we don’t reject them.

Personally, I’ve not found my stride. I’ve not arrived at my answers or risen above my swirling emotions. I’m still sitting on my nest. Without a doubt, these most recent years have been painful. We have all found ourselves of opposite sides of philosophical divides, seeing each other through lenses that threaten our ability to love and respect the person we are facing. For mental health reasons, many of us have turned down the volume on our own voices and the voices of others.

When love is not left on the table, it hurts. In those times, the words of God bring me comfort.

“The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” – Zephaniah 3:17