WORKS FOR ME V

GOD REPAIRS & RESTORES FROM THE ROOT

Two major snares in my life have been betrayal and disappointment.  I put my heart and soul into what I do; I give it my all.  So when things fall apart I take it very personally.  Separating who I am from what I do has never been one of my strengths.  This is true in personal relationships, in churches I have been committed to, and in jobs that I have been employed by.  I enter in with high ideals and great enthusiasm that usually end up shattered and leave me feeling defeated, betrayed, and disappointed for some time afterwards.

I believe in aiming high and working to achieve the best that can be done, by me and by those around me.  When forced to lower those standards I hold dear, a piece of me dies.  I only have so many pieces.  When they are gone I gave up; not on the ideals but the places and people who refused them.  Rather than compromising, I left, always feeling sad, betrayed, and disappointed.

I have been told that my expectations are too high, and maybe they are.  It’s not that I expect success at meeting high standards but I firmly believe they should be continually reached for and not dummied down.  I’ve seen the look on the faces of too many kids when they have achieved something that they believed impossible but continued to reach for until they got there.  I have experienced that pure delight myself.  It does something inside a person that makes the effort worthwhile and can never be taken away.  So I am committed to reaching for high expectations for myself and for others.

I have had to work through my sense of betrayal and disappointment, and still do.  It has an undermining effect on the people and places I was involved with and that never feels good.  I try to understand, act with grace, and forgive.  But it is difficult and one sided work so it remains incomplete.

Recently God has been faithful in His work within me and has obviously been at work in others as well.  It started with apologies from my mother as she was nearing death and reflecting over her life.  Then an apology from a friend involved in a very hurtful experience from a Christian community I was shunned by over 30 years ago.  Just recently I received an apology from someone in leadership at a workplace where I experienced harsh and abusive treatment. These unsought apologies were simply words but they were salve to my soul.  They not only healed but they softened a hardness that had grown and had kept me from a sense of graciousness toward those who had hurt me deep within.  No one would be aware of that hardness except for me; and even I was surprised to experience a release of freedom that had been bound up, a release of grace and a genuine forgiveness towards all that had been done.

God has been at work since the beginning of time, continually repairing and restoring that which was broken between Him and His creation, at the root of things unseen.  God is at work, continually repairing and restoring me, at the root of things unseen.  Thankfully that works for me.