The People Factor: How Building Great Relationships and Ending Bad Ones Unlocks Your God-Given Purpose (32 page)

The Jordan River

Do you know that the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea? The sea into which the Jordan River flows is called “dead” because it does not sustain life. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea; plant and sea life that flow into it die quickly. Symbolically, the last place Elijah and Elisha visit together speaks to death. One of the most foundational truths of healthy relationships is that they are impossible unless both parties involved are willing to die to themselves. They must be willing to lay aside their rights, agendas, and goals, doing what Romans 12:10 says to do: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

If you have ever been a part of a relationship in which both people die to themselves, you know that the most amazing thing happens as a result: two individuals willingly put to death their personal preferences and aspirations and a great relationship comes to life.

E
MBRACE THE
P
ROCESS

In a world that seems to be spinning faster and faster, certain things still just take time and require a necessary process. For example, we cannot rush the gestation period of a human being, we cannot push the earth to rotate on its axis any more rapidly, and we cannot speed up the passage of time. Likewise, no one can successfully
rush the development of a healthy relationship; it takes hours, days, weeks, months, and years.

Healthy relationships take time to build because they must undergo certain situations and be tested in the crucible of circumstances. Relationships are forged in all sorts of ways, and while the specifics may vary, the need for the process remains constant.

Strong relationships are worth the investments of time and energy they require. I encourage you to position yourself for the best relationships you have ever known by understanding the process they must go through and devoting yourself to it. Study the lives and relationship of Elijah and Elisha, learn from them, and allow the kinds of blessings that came to them centuries ago to manifest in your life today.

RELATIONSHIP REMINDERS

• Pay attention when you notice that a word and a person have come into your life at a certain time. It’s possible that God may be getting ready to do something great!

• Be looking for opportunities to prove your commitment and show your respect for the people in your life who may be candidates for healthy relationships. Act on those opportunities.

• Let go of any jealousy or competitiveness in your heart. Let people know that you are content to be in the background and that you are happy to see them shine.

• Don’t sit around waiting for something wonderful to happen to you or for a great relationship to find you. Get busy doing something positive!

• Be sincere about wanting the best for every person in your life and help them achieve it.

• Resist the temptation to walk away from a relationship too soon because a person misspeaks, makes an innocent mistake, or does something you view as negative but really is insignificant or minor. Give people a chance!

• Every relationship is a journey. It must go through certain places and learn from certain situations in order to be healthy. Resist the desire to try to skip or race through any set of circumstances necessary for a great relationship. Even if it is painful, embrace it, knowing that it serves a good and healthy purpose in the big picture of a relationship.

RAISING YOUR RELATIONAL IQ

1. In your life right now, who are the candidates for great relationships? Why?

2. Are you content to be in the background or do you prefer the spotlight? If you want to be the center of attention in your relationships all the time, what good things might you miss by not allowing the other person to shine at times?

3. Why are jealousy and competition so destructive in relationships?

4. In what practical ways can you show the people who are important to you that you really want the best for them and will help them achieve it?

5. Have you ever made a hasty decision and backed
away from a relationship before really giving someone a chance? Did you later regret it?

6. Do you consider yourself patient with others or do you tend to react too quickly when they make mistakes, say something wrong, or do something you don’t like?

7. In your own words, why is it necessary for relationships to go through certain things if they are going to be strong, healthy, and valuable to both parties involved? What benefits can people reap from the process and journey of relationships?

15

Lovesickness and Its Cure

T
HE
V
ERTICAL
F
ACTOR

CHARLES SCHULZ’S COMIC STRIP,
PEANUTS
, features a cast of memorable characters: Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, Woodstock, Pigpen, and others—including a girl named Peppermint Patty. Peppermint Patty has a
serious
crush on Charlie Brown. In fact, she is obsessed with him. She works so hard to get him to return her affections, but he simply is not interested. While romantic notions of Charlie Brown fill her thoughts, the boy with the curl on his forehead and the zigzag across his shirt can only sigh and say, “Good grief.”

Peppermint Patty is lovesick.

Peppermint Patty is in good company. She is part of an enormous throng of people who have been madly in love with someone who can only say, “Oh, good grief. Go away.” Classic works of literature, from
Wuthering Heights
to
The Great Gatsby
to a host of modern-day books, tell the stories of hope-filled romantic pursuits that fall flat. Movies such as
Gone with the Wind
,
Sabrina
, and
My Best Friend’s Wedding
have presented tales of spurned passion on big screens for years. Most of us, regardless of age, can recall the
soulful lyrics of songs about unfulfilled yearnings for love by artists such as Patsy Cline, Elvis, Bonnie Raitt, and Radiohead.

In the 1600s, English poet Abraham Crowley perfectly captured the torment of loving someone who does not love in return when he wrote, “A mighty pain to love it is, and ’tis a pain that pain to miss. But of all pains the greatest pain, It is to love, but love in vain.”
¹
Some three hundred years later, people were still writing about it. Joyce Carol Oates succinctly observed, “The worst thing: to give yourself away for not enough love.”
²

The fact that so much creativity in our culture has focused for so long on unrequited love tells me it is an enormous issue. Unrequited love is one of the most frustrating, agonizing experiences in life, but it is also quite common and has plagued human hearts for thousands of years. Maybe you know firsthand how Peppermint Patty and the people in books, movies, and music felt. Perhaps you, too, have longed for a relationship with a certain person who never seemed even the least bit interested in you. This happens often in romantic relationships but also in friendships (just ask a junior high student who cannot seem to find acceptance with the popular crowd at school). It even happens in corporate settings, when people will do almost anything to try to secure certain jobs with prestigious companies only to be rejected time and time again.

This widespread and painful problem of unrequited love or interest must have an answer, and I believe it does. We start the journey toward the solution with one question: How did this happen?

H
OW
D
ID
T
HIS
H
APPEN
?

When people catch a cold or the flu, telltale symptoms arise: sneezing, coughing, runny noses, fever, and body aches, to name a few.
One of their first questions is often, “Where did I get this?” We know such conditions are highly contagious and can be caught in all kinds of public venues.

The condition of lovesickness is different. Its symptoms include the inability to think clearly, excessive focus on one individual, emotions that go haywire, forgetting important things that need to be done, poor judgment, perhaps even butterflies in the stomach, and a heart that is deeply troubled over unrequited love. We do not contract lovesickness because other people have it and spread their germs; we get it because of the decisions we make. If we can understand how we get sick, we can learn to get better.

The Bible contains an ancient love story, the meaning of which people have debated for years. Some scholars suggest it is nothing more than a true account of an actual romance between two people. Others contend that it is an allegory in which the lover represents Christ and his beloved represents believers. For our purposes in this book, I will approach the story as an allegory. Let me share it with you.

Lover: I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. . . .

Beloved: I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.”

I have taken off my robe—must I put it on again? I have washed my feet—must I soil them again?

My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh . . . I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure.
I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls! O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love. (Song 5:1–8)

The first eight verses of Song of Songs 5 hold significant clues to the reasons people become lovesick. The lover is lovesick for three primary reasons we can easily see: his beloved is not awake; she is not willing to be inconvenienced for a relationship; and she does not value his interest in her or his presence in her life at that moment.

S
HE
’
S
A
SLEEP

Can you see what happens in the beginning of Song of Songs 5? A lovesick man stands at his lover’s door, but the woman is in bed, sleeping. They are supposed to be in the relationship together, equal participants, but in reality they are not. The lover is much more engaged in the relationship than his beloved is. When he knocks at her door and she replies, “I slept but my heart was awake,” we can see that her heart is in one place doing one thing, while her body is in another place doing something different. This means she has not given all of herself to this relationship; she is not all in. This causes her already lovesick lover to feel a little sicker.

You see, lovesickness happens when one person in a relationship is completely focused on the other person, who is not focused on the relationship at all. Maybe you know how that feels because you have been thoroughly infatuated with someone who hardly seemed aware of your existence. In a healthy relationship, both participants focus
equally on the other. They both understand the relationship and want to give themselves to it to keep it from being one-sided. In a lovesick situation, one person gives excessive time, attention, and energy to pursuing the other, while the other does not invest much of anything. When this kind of unbalanced attention and focus takes place, I like to say the principle of magnification is at work. This means that whatever we focus on becomes bigger and bigger in our minds.

In a healthy relationship, both participants focus equally on the other. They both understand the relationship and want to give themselves to it to keep it from being one-sided.

Think about the principle of magnification this way: Let’s say you really, really like chocolate cake. One day, the thought occurs to you,
I really want a piece of chocolate cake.
Unless you have a phenomenal amount of willpower or a medical reason not to eat cake, your thoughts will cause you to focus more and more on that piece of cake until you get it. It becomes increasingly important to you until you finally satisfy the craving.

Feeling this way in relationships works like wanting that chocolate cake, but to a greater degree. When you focus intensely on someone else, that person and the idea of a good relationship occupy a large place in your life. In an unbalanced relationship, no matter how big a place someone holds in your heart and mind, you hold a small place in his or hers. This happens most frequently in romantic associations, but applies to various other types of relationships as well.

In the story of the lover and his beloved, he is obviously focused on her in a major way. She is not awakened to the strength of his feelings; she is not nearly as eager to participate in the relationship as he is. He clearly does not occupy her thoughts the way she fills his.

If you fail to deal properly and honestly with the way someone feels about you when that person is less interested in a relationship than you are, it will make you lovesick. To stay relationally healthy, do your best to assess clearly how others feel about you. If you have a strong interest in a person or a group, let that be known and evaluate the response. If the other entity is similarly enthusiastic about a relationship with you, keep moving forward. If not, realize that the relationship may not hold as much potential as you had hoped. Be honest about that, accept it, and move on to a situation that will be less frustrating for you.

S
HE
D
OES
N
OT
W
ANT TO
B
E
B
OTHERED

Once her persistent lover’s knock awakens the beloved and she realizes he wants to see her, she says, probably groggily, “I have taken off my robe—must I put it on again? I have washed my feet—must I soil them again?” (5:3). In other words, “I have just gotten comfortable and cozy in my soft, warm bed, and you want me to get up and get dressed? I have just gotten clean and you want me to get my feet dirty again? I don’t think so!”