Thoughts...

Not too long ago I had lunch with an old friend. As we were catching up she started to share with me some of the problems she was facing with her husband. He doesn’t know how to accept love. He pulls away and doesn’t let anyone in, and hasn’t in a long time. And now he is freaked out and is pushing her and their family away. She is trying to help him and to fight for him, their marriage and their family, but is constantly coming up against opposition by him.

The more I thought about it the more it bothered me. Not only for them, but for what it showed me about all of us as humans.

When you are young, the idea of heart break seems foreign. You never consider the fact that it could happen to you. Young people tend to jump into relationships and give their whole heart every time. It doesn’t occur to them to protect themselves; that heart break could actually happen to them.

And then it does.

And everything changes.

Looking back I can see the exact moment when I started to shut myself off emotionally. Coming from a divorced family you would think I would have safe-guarded my heart a long time ago. But I didn’t. I didn’t think it could happen to me. I couldn’t imagine someone hurting me that badly. But unfortunately it happens to most of us. Our hearts get broken, and often times our defense mechanisms start to kick in. We run, we hide, we push people away, we use others, we hurt others before they can hurt us, we close ourselves off. Personally, I chose the running option. And I was good at it. Probably too good. I believe everyone wants to find love, but our defense mechanisms get in the way. And if you live defensively for too long, you end up hurting the people you are closest to.

Like my friend’s husband.

While over the past 1 ½ - 2 years God has helped me to deal with my “running”, sometimes it is still a struggle.

But now I am even more determined than ever to fight my own instincts. I see how much pain he is causing his wife, his family and himself. And I don’t want to get so used to “running” that I can’t go back. I’m afraid he may be so used to pushing people away and keeping them at an arm’s length that he doesn’t know how to get back.

So I will continue to fight my own instincts – my defense mechanisms. Because I know the person I want to become and that doesn’t include running anymore.


"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. but in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." - C.S. Lewis