When Needs Collide

Speak your truth; state your need--these are words that I have heard over and over during my years in al anon and of course through my awesome amazing therapist.  These are words I have slowly (read very very very slowly) begun to live in my life--or at least try to live in my life.

Okay so I've gotten better at thinking about what my truth is, what my need is.  There have actually even been a few times when I've stated them and guess what?!?!?  They were heard; they were acknowledged; they were satisfied. So I'm getting better at that I proudly say as I break my arm patting myself on the back, just like Pavlov's dogs who received rewards every time the bell rang, I have begun to speak up when the bell rings in my head
and I believed that every time I spoke up and expressed my need it would be fulfilled...until it wasn't.

And now I have something else to learn, something I think may be even harder. I can speak my truth; I can state my need but that doesn't mean someone HAS to agree and even worse it doesn't mean someone HAS to satisfy it.  They can actually say no to me and I can actually have a temper tantrum about it just like a 2 year old.  My temper tantrums are in my head and in my gut; they are suffered alone where I tell myself over and over how unfair it is, and then like a 2 year old that has worn him or herself out, I slowly start to let go.

Here's the other thing I've recently experienced.  Someone else, someone I love fiercely, might have a different truth, a different need, and they too are allowed to express it and to live it regardless of what

I think about it. My initial reaction to this is to pout--to return to my head and begin making lists (I even color code them in my head) of how unfair this is, how victimized I am by it, how much this is in contrast to what I want and need.  I can withdraw.

This my friends is when the hard work really starts.  Two people with colliding truths and needs--

Yes this is where it's time to put on your big girl panties and deal with life.  This is where I realize I have learned about speaking truth and expressing needs not only in al anon or therapy but also in my faith.  I have learned that God seeks to fill my needs, but not just my needs but everyone else's too. Mark 6:56 says, "And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed."

I have said before and I continue to preach that we are the hands and feet of Christ in the world, and that we are to be the healing, loving presence of God to and for one another.  My faith tells me that when we can't be, when our needs collide, God is present for both of us--God meets both our needs in ways we can neither ask or imagine.

I also know and believe that we as people of faith are to speak our truth in love no matter how hard it is to hear from others.  Ephesians 4:15 tells us, "But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love."  And this means not running away (darn it), now withdrawing (darn it again), not breaking away from one another (triple darn blasted it to infinity and beyond)--but remaining in community, in relationship and working through it.  It means loving through it, maybe crying through it, but getting through it.

This means sticking with it; staying in relationship, no matter how difficult.  It means being together in our differences, together in our love, together where the healing reconciling love of God also resides.