There is a story that needs to be written, but I'm not too sure how to write it.
I know you want me to tell you how to love a broken person and how to help them mend, but I'm don't think I know how to do that yet. I know a lot about how not to do that. I'm pretty sure that you can't actually fix anyone and that a person's healing can only come from within.
What I maybe can tell you about is a little bit how not to become broken yourself as you love a broken person.
I need to write this because I was broken a bit this week in a way I was not expecting. This has helped me learn more about myself and what I was doing wrong. Now I will pass it along to you.
OK.
In the beginning.. Loving broken people led to me breaking lots and lots. I think why I broke was because I am a very oblivious person and I tend to see people as their best selves. Whenever they would do something that I thought was out of character for them (as in, behave in a way that was not like their best self) I would shatter and feel betrayed.
Silly me! Didn't I know that no one can live up to those kinds of standards, let alone someone who is broken. By the way, the type of brokenness that the people I love mostly deal with manifests into addictions. So yeah, not our best selves indeed.
Someone once told me that you can not trust people. You can only trust them to be themselves.
This is good advice, however, if you learn and know by heart all the ways that a broken addicted person is going to possibly behave (the lying, the anger, the throwing of things, the cheating, the saying horrible things, that other person they become who hates you and especially, ESPECIALLY the falling off the wagon again (and again and again and again and again)) then probably you are going to end up with a heart full of contempt.
You know contempt. The one that knows exactly what the other person is going to say or do before they walk into the room and already hates it and has a snipey comeback. Anyways, I found out that contempt leads to hate and is the killer of relationships. We do not want contempt.
What we can use this for is awareness. We can and must be aware of these things! Because they are a real part of life when you love a broken person. When you are aware of these things then you have a choice to make. Can I love this person? Can I really love them even if they never change? You don't have to you know. You are allowed to walk away. If you stay and you can't really love all of them the way they are right now then you will only bring them and yourself more pain and nothing good will come. Please, please! Be brutally honest with yourself.
If you decide to stay and to love then know it will be hard and you can't save them. You have to let them go. By that I mean... They may not be able to or want to change and they might go deeper into a darker hole. There may come a time where it is too unsafe to stay (Then you must go. Trust your gut. Do not stay. The choice is made for you. I'm not even kidding.) . There may come a time where that other person they become hates you so much that they leave and you must let them.
You still there? Alright.
This is where my oblivious nature has helped me to love. I am aware. My eyes are open. But I hold this place in my heart and their life open for them to be their best self. I can treat them like their best self because I see them that way. When they don't act that way I am not surprised or betrayed, (although it still does hurt) because I know about that. I am aware. My eyes are open.
Something beautiful happens when you treat someone like they are their best self (instead of treating them the way they deserve. {walking on egg shells, suspicious, nagging, sad and depressed when they are around, chip on your shoulder}). They slowly let down their guard and begin to act more and more like their best self. They will fall down again and again. But when you give them a chance to see how great life can be in the in between times you give them a glimmer of a hope of a fighting chance to find a reason to want to try.
If all they ever get is what they deserve then they have no reason at all to try. Would you?
That's kind of all I've got.
This week I was blindsided because it came from someone I was not expecting. I was not expecting that they should be that kind of broken, or that I would care. But now I am aware.
I have much more to learn and in the end I must let it all go anyways.
Ps, this is also an oversimplification for the purpose of communicating this to you. There are other things going on and I will try and share them as they come to me.
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