THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE
June 2011
C IS FOR CONFESSION AND CONTRITION
Introduction
“Love is never having to say I’m sorry….” Anyone committed to living in true intimacy knows this worldly wisdom is not reality. In any close, intimate relationship, there comes a time when hurts are created, misunderstandings take place, and offenses are committed. When any of these occur, there is a strain on the relationship and as a result things need to be owned, repented of, confessed, and forgiveness sought that will lead to reconciliation and a honest renewal and refreshing of the relationship. Offenses do happen, and when they do, appropriate action needs to follow. The relationship can sometimes be on hold until things are cared for redemptively. That is how love operates. It cannot stand alienation. It seeks out forgiveness and is forgiving. It is always open to forgiving.
In my book on FORGIVENESS: The Key to Wholeness, I have sought to share the forgiveness process from beginning to end. Forgiveness is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. The end result is reconciliation, renewal, and a deeper level of relating within the realm of the intimacy love alone creates. (See the archives on this website for 2009 under “Family Matters” for the full discussion on forgiveness). If love is not forgiving, then it is not the love of found in 1 Corinthians 13. If love is not willing to accept being forgiven, then it is also not based in that same passage. How we relate to this topic tells more about us than of the offense or the offender. 1 John points out that when we learn to forgive we experience God in the process. If He is in it, then that is what love does. That’s because God is love. Since we are made in His image, this means we are made for love, also.
Any time we are tempted to play the numbers game – how many times am I to forgive? – we are reflecting our own insides for others to see. Love never asks the number question; its focus is on the relationship and on wholeness: that of the offender and of ourselves. You cannot love and not forgive. God has forgiven us because of His great love for us. Christ died to make that forgiveness possible and that love real. This is why we must learn to love with His love.
1. Love Owns Its Mistakes
There are two kinds of offenses: real and imagined. Both cause a rupture in the relationship that is building on intimacy. Both need to be dealt with, and never ignored or neglected. Become aware of what has happened between the two of you and deal with it. Deal with both types as real until things can be resolved. Own your part in it and what it means to your partner. If you were wrong, then own it. If you are sorry, say so. If you aren’t sorry, then work on your self-awareness. Love seeks the best possible knowledge of self-understanding out of which to love others. Love is sorry for all its wrongs, slights, and offenses. If you need the other’s help in understanding what it means to the other, then ask and listen and remember. You want restoration and intimacy. That is your mutual goal. Forgive as often as needed. Forgive as you need and want to be forgiven.
2. Love Owns Its Misunderstandings
Misunderstandings arise within any relationship, even an intimate one. We are not always good readers of the other, and we do not always send clear, understandable messages to the other. Love seeks to respond spontaneously and caringly, but misunderstandings do arise. Love seeks to avoid these from happening but when they do they are to be owned and corrected. Both can be sorry one took place, and both can work to correct the situation and go from there. Whoever is at fault owns it and both negotiate the correction. It doesn’t matter what happened or who is at fault; what matters is two mature adults can take responsibility for their part in it and see that it is corrected and the lesson remembered. Both desire the highest quality of relating. How we deal with our misunderstandings has a lot to say about our levels of maturity.
3. Love Welcomes Carefrontation
You cannot imagine the stuff that gets hidden or buried or stored away for a rainy day when it comes to negative feelings and secrets. Lots of times this stuff comes out in illness and psychosomatic ills. They can also come out when the inner storage space gets full and running over. This can form an undercurrent in the relationship. So now which one is going to call for a powwow and get things out into the open? No one likes to be confronted, but carefrontation is different. When we are approached in love and genuine caring, we seek to respond in kind. “We need to talk….” “Something is bothering me and I need your input….” “Help me see what is happening between us….” Love responds with a “Thanks for bringing it to my attention…lets talk….” Intimate relationships are sustained by carefrontation and sharing. Both must have the freedom to be able to bring up what needs to be faced together. Like Paul admonishes in Ephesians, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” or whatever needs to be faced. Love listens to the pain within another.
4. Love is Fractured When There’s No Contrition
The lack of genuine contrition sends the message our being right is more important than the relationship being mended, and the feelings of the injured are being discounted in the process. We need to be genuinely sorry for anything that hinders our relating or calls our love into question. When we are genuinely sorry for an offense or slight or misunderstanding, our partner will hear it and act accordingly. We are not making excuses nor are we denying our blame. If one is in pain, so is the other. It is as if the relationship is pained. Who ever offends needs to know the feelings and pain of the other. Their pain, and ours, cannot dissipate until it is mended and contrition is the key to the healing process beginning. We need to move through it together and at a pace that brings each along with the other. The couple will create the healing needed and they alone will determine the time needed.
5. Love Knows How to Confess and Why
The word “confess” means to “say the same thing.” If one really offends the other by being thoughtless, rude, or slighting, a true confession is for the offender to own the offense and state it right up front in the confession. It isn’t enough to say, “Sorry, I goofed,” or “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” True confession works like this. “I was thoughtless when I (state the offense) and I am deeply sorry that I hurt you and caused you pain by (state what it was and what it means) and I ask for your forgiveness.” The “why” of it is “because I love you, because I care about your feelings, and because I care about our relationship. I want it to be all it can be.” The best way to own an offense is to put it into words that help the other know you see it, understand it, and regret having done it. If you have to ask the “why” of it, then forget it. Love has its reasons, and knows them by heart.
6. Love Thrives on Wholeness and Wellness
First of all, I want our relationship to be whole and well because that is what we both need most and that is what we have promised one another by our love. If I am to love wholeness and wellness into you by love-gifting you, then I must possess it myself. If we cannot learn to thrive in ways that lead to wholeness and wellness then we are not really meeting each other’s real needs. Love thrives on meeting those real needs. We are working together at wholeness that guarantees wellness and maturity. You need to know I am growing within myself as a person because I have you in my life. I want you to realize the same for yourself because I am in your life. I am growing because of you and I thank God that He gave me you. This is how we want to spend the rest of our lives…together!
7. Love Seeks Reconciliation and Renewal
Offenses can disrupt harmony, detour a relationship, and cause pain that can be disastrous. They take away from what has been in place and also can prevent it from being any stronger than it has been in the past. It needs to remain on a growing trajectory. We need it to become all God wants it to be. This is why love always seeks both reconciliation and renewal. Reconciliation does not just put us back to where we were before the offense occurred. It cannot return to how it used to be because a rupture has been experienced. But if reconciliation is allowed to bring us back together then the grounds for renewal are also present. Instead of basking in the reconciliation we move into the renewal so the relationship can be even stronger than before. This is how God’s grace works. The offense caused a downdraft but the results of renewal is being able to soar higher than ever before.
In Conclusion
Love is willing to endure whatever comes its way because that is the nature of love. We are in it for better or whatever, but always together, and for the good of the intimacy we are creating and maintaining in our oneness. We are committed to the long haul. We can count on each other doing their part to make it work to the glory of God and to our own personal joy. This is our heart’s desire and we are dedicated to making it happen by His grace and our mutual love for one another.
Over the years we have been and are building a strong level of resilience and sticktuitiveness in our relating. There is a level of companionship between us that makes it desirable to work at it as long as we live. No matter what we have to confront together, we are making sure it does not put a wedge between us or threaten what we have fashioned. We know in our hearts there in nothing we will ever have to face but with Him as our Guide we will make it through.
Love seeks to mature the two of us at all levels. It does not allow us to plateau or settle for less than what God has in store for us. We know the best is yet to come, but at the same time we desire to have each and every day move us more and more toward that chosen goal. Being mature at fifty does not guarantee maturity at sixty or even seventy. The challenges of life do not allow us to coast. Dealing with the concerns around us keep us needing to grow. This is why our Faith Journey and Faith Community are so important to us. We can draw from the wisdom of those around us. We can share our learned lessons with them. They help us see where we need to grow. Their wisdom needs to become ours. Others behind us need our example to follow. Graduation Day is not until He calls all of us Home.
Love learns to forgive itself and move forward. So many marriages and families get detoured or even sidetracked for a lack of self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness is mirrored in our lack of self-love and self-acceptance. We cannot claim God’s future when we have been unwilling to allow Him to own our past. He died for that past. He owns it now. To carry it around and allow it to rob us of His present and future is to live as if He had not redeemed us. We heal our future by coming to grips with our past and allowing His forgiveness to care for it all. Who are we to hang it around our necks like an albatross and walk around beating ourselves up over what He has forgiven and buried in the depths of the sea? That’s like living as if He does not.
Love knows how to accept forgiveness and to be eternally grateful for it. It is the cleansing that frees us now to love others with His love. It allows us to be immersed in His grace and to seek the same for others. It allows us to accept the forgiveness of others and to move toward them in a forgiveness that makes all things new. Our problem in learning to love is based in our lack of self-love. Our difficulty in creating and maintaining intimacy is also based in our lack of self-love. The best way to know why there are problems in our marriage and we struggle with a lack of loving another is to look in the mirror and become aware of why we remain alienated from the person reflected there. Do you know how much God loves that person you see there? Stop and look at that person with God’s eyes!
Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net
Next Month:
C IS FOR CONVICTION
