This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. How being hurt by people we think are safe can shut us down completely and make us unable to trust anyone in our lives. How everyone that then comes into our lives is viewed with suspicion, met with caution, held back at a distance, deemed unsafe. How much we need that protective mechanism to not get hurt again – but how it can often hinder us from the blessing of relationship with those who are safe people in our lives. How relationship can heal us, but we have been so broken by relationship that we find ourselves in a paradox of self-preservation and extreme loneliness with no balance between.
It’s hard to learn to trust again, to feel safe in relationship. We inch ourselves forward a little, get scared, retreat back into our dark hovels where we are alone, but safe. We need to feel safe. We need to know we are safe. It’s easy to be safe when we huddle in the corner of our lives and dare not let others come near us.
But it’s lonely.
To love is to risk hurt. To trust is to risk betrayal. To open ourselves is to risk stepping onto a battlefield unguarded and praying we don’t get shot down. There is a need to be safe.
But there is a greater need to be loved.
We are warriors who have fought hard, survivors who have only known the battle. But somehow, we must become courageous humans who embrace the surrender. For surrender is not defeat, but the end of the fight.
We must find a way to lay down our defenses and surrender our weapons of self-preservation. For we have battled long enough in our solitude. We are stronger, wiser, aware, empowered. We have learned to trust our intuition, our instincts. We know how to stay safe. We know how to survive.
But now, dear heart, we must know how to live.
– Kathy Parker, originally posted on her blog: kathyparker.com.au
