Then and Only Then

Remember what it felt like to watch your friend fade into nothing through the back window of your dad’s 1976 station wagon? It was on that day you pulled out of town headed to a new city where dad had the new job. How about the day you saw your best friend off to an out of state college? Do you remember how it felt? I do. I remember that sense of loss, the feeling of loneliness, the overwhelming boredom that quickly found its way into my life.

Researches have long said that many, if not most, of our deepest human needs are met through relationships. In other words as humans we need connections to other humans to function properly. I hate that. I know that hate is a strong word, but it’s the best word to describe how I feel about this. I hate that I have to be connected to feel normal. As a matter of fact, scripture makes the same assertion. We are all a part of a body, each of us place a specific part in a divinely appointed economy. If a single part is missing, the whole doesn’t function correctly (1 Corinthians 12).

Recently, I’ve become intimately acquainted with this truth. I’m the type of guy who chooses his friends carefully. The people that I allow into my inner circle, if you will, are people who I have first come to trust. My peeps are people who will speak truth to me, when no one else will. My entire life, I can only remember a half dozen people who were willing to look me in the eye and speak truth. For some reason people in my life are more prone to sweep my behavior under the rug, than call me out. I have a lot of protectors, but very few friends.

In addition to trust, my friends are people who I feel safe with. That may seem strange coming from a guy of my size and with my reputation, but even the most intimidating men are vulnerable at times. Vulnerability is not my gift, but when I am it’s like opening flood gates. In all reality, I can count my friends on one hand. I have thousands of acquaintances, and lots of people who would consider me to be their friend, but there are only five people in my world that I have given the title of “friend.”

This week one of those people was temporarily removed from my circle. I say temporarily, because that’s all I’ll allow it to be (unless of course God says otherwise). Although I know that my friend has not given up on me, I feel a sense of loss. I feel as though a piece of me is missing. Every day I fight the urge to get in my truck and bring them back. It’s like the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the 1 that is missing. However, in this particular case, the separation is healthy. I hate that it’s healthy, but it is.

You see, sometimes we take what God intended for good and we twist it into something that becomes damaging to our souls. We become so dependent on another person that we lose our dependency on God. People are tangible, they feel with us, dream with us, talk to us, and share experiences with us. God on the other hand, although present at every moment, cannot be seen, heard, or felt in the physical sense. Our relationship with God calls us to live peacefully without the need for physical validation of the relationship. Damn that’s hard! I’m not the co-dependent sort, but invisible relationships are difficult nonetheless.

When a relationship with another person takes the place of our relationship with God, it’s only a matter of time before God presses the pause button. No matter how wonderful or meaningful our human relationships may seem, they should never be allowed to interrupt our relationship with Christ. When we make this mistake one of two things will happen, either God will allow us to wallow in our confusion for a season, or He will intervene until things are back on track between us and Him. I believe the decision he makes is based upon our response to his loving call in our hearts.

God is a jealous lover and the intensity of his passion for us in incommunicable. The relationship he desires for us places him in first place. When we put someone else in first place, he calls out to us. If we fail to respond to his loving call, His righteous jealousy prompts him to seek us out and restore order in our hearts. When things are back in order, then and only then can we be restored to our human relationships.

Today my heart hurts. It hurts because I feel the pain I’ve caused my savior, and it hurts because I miss my friend. My encouragement to all of you is this, love God first. No matter the cost; love God first. I’ll never give up on my relationship with my friend, but today I’ve learned the hard way that God will never give up on me. I find peace in that. Read Psalm 86:11