Boxing With God
The simplest thing to know about religion, spirituality and the human race’s place within it, is something even a child can grasp.
God is love.
So you know what kind of pain and discomfort it can cause to be fighting with your baby. You hear about it in love songs from remorseful & begging soul singers, you see it in movies, and Hallmark has a writing staff devoted to it. The interesting thing about love is that everyone falls in it and acts on it, hoping that the Cloud 9 tendencies are the ones that really sustain a relationship. In fact, true love is found in hardship, trials and forgiveness.
But we don’t sign up for those things, and that’s why we come out swinging.
There is a certain level of divine providence that many of us associate with finding the love of our lives. We view the companionship, intimate understanding, and similarities in values and experiences as a gift from a higher power. And that’s not uncommon; after all, if there’s a being capable of creating an entire universe, it’s totally possible for that same being to be capable of turning our lives in a new direction.
So when something outside of divine grace grows into that same equation, it can be the rotten apple in life’s Garden of Eden. The person that you once thought did not have a way of disappointing, failing or missing your expectations of a future husband, wife, father or mother, shows frailty in judgment and character.
We sometimes can react like its Armageddon. We attempt to establish patterns of the same behavior, we hold in the right words of forgiveness and compassion, and put out the wrong words of fear and contempt. When the walls come crashing down, our first instinct is to pull out the sledgehammer.
We do the exact same things that we would not want done to us if the scenarios were switched.
It’s hard to link religion and faith with worldly emotions, because their foundation is in containing those emotions to achieve an afterlife of joy and happiness. It’s easy to put yourself through hell, trying to make it to Heaven. If you smile, say the right things, and extend compassion, you in turn feel subservient and disingenuous.
And that’s exactly the point.
Whether you are trying to be a saint or a good spouse, the door to understanding is opened with the key of compromise. Normally, its give a little, take a little; but it can sometimes mean giving the smile and ‘ok‘ now to get one when need it most later. This is a particularly important for men, because it doesn’t take much for one person in a relationship with more height, more weight, and more bass in their voice to impart an appearance of control and consternation.
There’s nothing wrong with having a short memory or constantly forgiving. After all, its what we would want if we ever became less than perfect. We all are going to fight; they don’t call marriage an institution for nothing. But it doesn’t pay to fight with the love of your life without the willingness to end it before it starts.
Besides, no matter how far you try to reach, your arms will forever be too short.