Fairy Tales & Expectation

I’m just gonna say it, relationships are hard. Aren’t they? I mean sure, there are those with who we experience some level of relational ease with but that feels like the exception rather than the rule, at least for me. Many of us experience a variety of different types of relationships in a variety of different contexts. We have spouses, children, parents, siblings, co-workers, friends, neighbors, enemies, counselors, doctors, dentists and the list goes on and on. Some of these are transactional and the terms are very clear. I’m going to pay you for this service and in return, I am expecting you to provide me with said service, but many of them are much more complex than that! I often find myself dreaming and wishing that more of my relationships were this way, at the same time appreciating and recognizing that I definitely desire a deeper level of intimacy with my wife, son, and friends than I do with my dentist, right? What these transactional relationships offer me in ease, they can’t offer me in depth. Sometimes this feels like a dilemma, and oftentimes in relationships, I feel like I can’t win. Ya, feel me? What makes relationships so hard and so much work? I recognize how loaded that question is! We are complex people coming into relationships with a large bag full of past experiences, values, ways of thinking, viewing, and living in the world. In our bag, we also find joys, hurts, wounds, pain, trauma, and disappointments. We get hurt in relationships and so we put up emotional walls to protect ourselves from being hurt again. We learn hard lessons in some relationships that cause us to guard ourselves against learning the same hard lessons in the next relationships. Some of this is healthy, for sure! Some of this keeps us from pursuing and experiencing the depth of relational intimacy that we long for deep down in our souls. For me, this often feels overwhelming and I feel stuck relationally. Anyone else?

 What makes relationships so hard and so much work? For sure, the baggage that we are all bringing into relationships where the other person is bringing in their own baggage. Additionally, it’s really hard for us to not buy into the fairy tale sense of relationships that pervade so much of the content we consume. To be clear, I’m not blaming or making our consumption and the things we consume the problem. That may very well be the problem, but minimally it contributes to our problem. I remember hearing the warnings from the pulpit of the church I grew up in about romance novels, haha. Do you know what I’m talking about? Books that had beautiful people on the front of them and whose contents contained every person's dream of what romance should look like. I’m out of the romance novel game so I’m not sure if they still exist, but we have no lack of content that puts on display a fairy tale way of relating to one another. Social media provides a steady stream of our friends and celebrity personalities and influencers putting on display the highlight reels of their lives. I often find myself mindlessly scrolling and if I’m not careful, I find myself comparing the absolute worst things in my life to their absolute best. I mean, I’ve yet to see the post that is a picture of the plate that got thrown across the room in an angry rage, or the tear-filled selfie as someone sits in their car following an argument where they just needed a minute, have you? Additionally, many of us grew up with a steady diet of Disney movies, Rom-coms, and TV shows that influence our understanding of what relationships should look like! These things often perpetuate within us a fairy tale way of life and relationships that simply isn’t possible or reasonable to expect. So what are we to do, stop watching “ HITCH”, (my favorite rom-com by far, Kevin James is a riot)?  Do we commit to never watching another rerun of “The King of Queens?” I can’t fathom, (again Kevin James is a riot, no?).

I mean, aren’t we quick to reorder the external realities of our life without spending much time wrestling with the internal realities of our lives that contribute to those very external realities? If the problem isn’t the movies, or even the social media content that we are consuming, what is the problem? We can not and should not keep sourcing our expectations in false realities! Our favorite shows are scripted and written to project that relational romanticism and perfection that we all desire in a way that draws us into it. Our favorite social media profiles are carefully curated to draw us in, to buy their products, to want their life! We can’t get sucked into this false sense of reality, friends, and try to replicate it in our very real relationships! We have to leave the fairy tale version of relationships and be present in the reality of our relationships. Seems so simple, right? Let’s all pause for a quick eye roll and move into a way of life and relating that offers us some hope in the midst of this overwhelming move from fairy tale expectations to realistic and reasonable expectations for the relationships that we value most in our life. 

We must learn to live in the moment. Not a moment from the past and not a moment we’re hopeful for in the future, but the actual moment that we find ourselves in. I found myself living in my relational hopes for the future or trapped in my relational hurts from the past in such a way that makes relating in the present extremely difficult. The reality of our lives is that we don’t live in the past and we don’t live in the future we live in the present. That is all that we have the capacity to do. We don’t transcend the realities and limitations of time. It would be cool if we did, but we don’t. I recently hired a health coach in my pursuit of health and wholeness. As of my last weigh-in, I’m down a total of 26 lbs and have loads more energy for life and relationships! He regularly shares this quote from Mark Batterson, a pastor in the D.C. area, “yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, win the day.” That’s good, isn’t it? Obviously, he shares it in the context of making day-by-day decisions and not getting lost in the defeats of the past or lost in the overwhelming goals for the future. The encouragement here is to be present in and to the moment. Certainly, we should pay attention to the past, because as we all know we may not live in the past but the past very much lives in us. This has been crucial to my personal pursuit of healing with Jesus and will be to yours. Do you see the implications for relationships in “winning the day”? How do we cultivate relational expectations that aren’t sourced in a far-off fairy tale land, but from the reality of our actual relationships? We must learn to be present in and to the moment! 

Jesus says in Matthew 11: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” In this invitation from Jesus, I see a couple of ways we can begin to cultivate a discipline of being present in and to the moment. 

Come to Me

If we are ever going to cultivate a life that is lived in the moment we are going to have to cultivate our ability to be present to and with Jesus. A life lived in the present will grow from the soil of presence with Jesus. I can’t truly be present to myself or others until I first learn to be present to Jesus. How are you cultivating presence with Jesus? 

In nearly 25 years of following Jesus, silence and solitude have had the most profound impact on my ability to cultivate a life that is present to and with Jesus. Through these ancient disciplines, I have found the ability to be present to Jesus, myself, and others. I’m being transformed by Jesus and that allows me to be a transforming presence in the lives of those around me. How might you be hearing the invitation of Jesus into life rhythms of silence and solitude? 

One of the best resources I've read on the topic is a short and approachable book entitled, “Into the Silent land; A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation”, by Martin Laird. I devoured it in a single setting. Being present to the moment and present in and to our relationships will absolutely require us to SLOW DOWN, there is no way around that! In an effort to eliminate hurry from our lives and learn to slow down I’d recommend John Mark Comer’s book, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry; How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World.” This is an easy and excellent read written by a Pastor in Portland. 

Learn of Me

Jesus also invites us to learn of Him, or learn from Him. Living present to the moment is a bit countercultural to the reality of our lives, isn’t it? I mean how much of “what is next” or “what was” consumes your time? I’m embarrassed by my TRUE answer! Jesus more than anyone who has ever lived a life present to the moment and the people he was with. If we are going to learn to do the same we are going to have to learn from the teacher, the greatest teacher, Jesus. These 3 thoughts and ways of living have me increasingly trying to re-order my entire life around them. They are;

Be with Jesus

Be like Jesus

Do what Jesus did

That’s it, it’s that simple! Except it isn’t, so the need to surround myself with people, other disciples, other apprentices of Jesus who are on the same journey is vitally necessary. Which kind of brings this whole present to the moment and present to and in our relationships full circle. I’m wounded in relationships, yes. but I’m also healed in relationships.

In relationship, I learn a new way of relating in the chaos of the world. In relationship, I learn to have and hold reasonable and realistic relational expectations. In relationship, I learn to escape from the fairy tale way of life and relating to the realities of life and relating. Jesus meets us in our present, and too often I find myself disconnected from the present in pursuit of the past or the future. I need Jesus to teach me to live in the present, and my guess is, so do you! What is it gonna look like for you to cultivate a life and relationships that are lived “in the moment”?

Jesus wraps up this thought in Matthew 11 with the words, “and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” That's what we all want, isn’t it? Rest for our souls. I know I do. I’m too familiar with the “hard yoke” and the “heavy burden” of relationships, aren’t you? Jesus invites us into a different way, a better way, a lighter way of life, and relationships that finds our home in presence with Jesus. Our souls are at rest, when we are “at home” with Jesus, or in our presence with Jesus. How do you hear His invitation to “Come to Me” and “Learn from Me”?

Grace and Peace to you as you journey with Jesus!

Submitted by: Matthew Korte