My prayer and self goal for 2018 is to seek and welcome peace into my mind, heart, and soul in whatever form God wills. I have talked on end about my anger and how it attributes to bitterness in my current and previous relationships (even if previous relationships are only scenarios played in my head), but something reached out to me in 15 Days of Prayer with St. Teresa of Avila: in order to truly follow God, we need to practice detachment to everything in this life, including people.
How Detachment Can Help
Firstly, detachment from all material things and people does not mean selling your home and car and leaving your family for spiritual training in a remote part of the world. While some are called to the religious life, most of us are needed for evangelizing and discipleship within our family, work place, and community. The kind of detachment that helps us in coming closer to God is the acceptance that no one and nothing comes before our relationship with the Lord.
To paraphrase 15 Days of Prayer with St. Teresa of Avila, St. Teresa encourages three steps to feel happy and fulfilled: love for one another, detachment from things, and true humility (Abiven 47-53). Love for one another means that we strive to love each other like Jesus loves all people. True humility brings us closer to God within our heart and soul and strengthens the love we have for others. While both of these are great starting places, the detachment from worldly things reached out to me first.
Detachment means not loving money or food or success over our Lord, but what about with people? Detachment doesn't mean cutting out everyone (although most of us probably think this will be the easiest option). Rather, detachment means not holding anyone over the Lord and even over others. Children are loans from God, but so are our parents, our spouses, and our friends. Our love for them must always be second place to God, or we risk setting God aside for them.
My Need for Detachment
I hold a lot of regret in my soul, and something a friend told me this past weekend was that she reached a point in a toxic relationship where she finally dropped to her knees and asked God to take the burden off her shoulders. For her, it was reconciliation.
For my previous romantic relationship, I haven't spoken to him in a few weeks and I avoid the places he goes. I know I still hold hurt in my heart, so I do my best to maintain distance so that I do not end up saying something in anger I would regret.
However, there are also relationships I have that I hold higher than others because of the loyalty these individuals have given me. While I love them, I am constantly being reminded, from this book and others, that my love for them shouldn't be so great that I place them in the same height that I do my Savior.
In order to love all people equally in the way that Jesus does, I need to forgive and to equalize all my relationships. I know I am able to say yes or no to a request ("Just say a simple, 'Yes, I will,' or 'No, I won't.' Your word is enough" [Matthew 5:38]; "But most of all, dear brothers and sisters, never take an oath, by heaven or earth or anything else. Just a simple yes or no so that you will not sin and be condemned for it" [James 5:12]). It all comes down to not automatically saying yes or no depending on who the individual is and the kind of relationship we currently have.
This is yet another thing that won't happen overnight, but any learning I receive gets me one step closer to recognizing my sin and my problems and knowing how to become more Christian in my interactions.
My Lord, You are mighty and merciful. May You bless all your children in their journeys of self-discovery and love. May You help us to love You, Your Son, ourselves, and all those we encounter. We thank you for Your glory, my God. Together we pray, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment