Growing up, I was under the misconception that certain relationships never changed, those relationships being with God and your family. I think I lived with that mentality because I created some sort of stability as I was trying to figure out the world. But now, being slightly more grown up than I ever have before, I'm beginning to see that no relationship is ever the same for any amount of time.
As unsettling as I still seem to find this truth, I think I'm seeing it now because I'm getting to the point where I'm secure enough with myself and my ability to digest facts and information and be able to balance it with what I as an individual being feel, and then form an opinion.
There have been times in my life where I went along with a thought pattern because that's what everyone else was doing. Then there have been times where I went against everyone else because I was trying to be an individual.
The relationship between men and God is ridiculously complex. I have never really wanted to think about it before. But lately it's something that I've thought about quite a bit. My idea of God and my relationship with him is, for the first time in my life, evolving. Up until now, it was something that I thought couldn't change. God was what he was and that was that. In my mind religion inhibited men from having any semblance of a normal relationship with the creator. I'm coming to the conclusion that I was off on my thoughts a little there. It's a terrifying reality to see that relationship changing. But it's also insanely refreshing.
The relationships in families are the only relationships that can give the previous relationship a run for its money in complexity. Family had always been my foundation, even over religion. The past couple months have crumbled that foundation and I've had to stand on my own foundation.
I didn't even know that I HAD my own foundation.
It's been a rude awakening to say the least.
Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I believe in? When everything else in the world changes, what do I still KNOW to be true?
These are some big questions, and they're not ones that can be figured out on a timetable.
As I look back on the last 5 years of my life, I've been in the middle of one B I G learning curve. It's been insane. Everything that I thought I knew about myself has not just been shaken, but it's been tossed, crushed, gathered together and then blown away again.
And I have been growing every single second of it.
Growing is one of those hard things to appreciate when you're going through it. But when you look back on it, you know that you wouldn't change that experience for anything in the world.
Getting older, and having experiences behind you that you can look to is nice, because now when even more difficult situations hit me, I can see that all of this turmoil and confusion will lead to greater enlightenment and growth than any other circumstances ever could.
Granted, it is unsettling that the situations keep getting harder. I don't like that much and I don't let myself think about all of the other things that are coming my way. But knowing that I'm capable of evolution and rising to the occasion is what gets me up in the morning.
Even as relationships are twisted, and mutilated, there is hope.
I really like hope.
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