The Heart is more than emotions

Ephesians 4:31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior. 32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
God, you know my heart, my broken heart, you know the bitterness and anger that are there and continue to form there. That you would take my broken heart, broken because of its own hardness --a heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh.(Ezekiel 36:25-27) I know this heart will bruise easily, but God that I wont become calloused and insensitive and apathetic over time. But that is would be a heart filled with love for you that overflows to others a heart that is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful or proud. A heart that is not rude or self seeking, that doesn't keep records of wrongs like callouses. A heart that triumphs with the truth, that never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.(I Corinthians 13) that others have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. that they would experience the love of Christ, though it is so great we will never fully understand it. Then we will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.(Ephesians 3:14-19)

Emotions are a funny thing
I once had a relationship with this Guy; for the sake of the accused we shall call him Ed. Ed and I met in a group of people our age that got together every week. Over the course of many months I started to feel a special connection to him, I started to seek out his company, I would swing by his workplace for lunch, I would pop in and see him from time to time, do stuff with him and his family. We talked everyday mostly through texting while at work or on the phone. I was pretty reluctant to push the issue of where the relationship was going because I have been hurt many times before. I was careful not to talk about it too much or too little, I wasn’t trying to avoid the topic but I didn’t want to be the one to do all the initiating.

One night we were talking late, and I had had a particularly hard day, just dealing with memories of a past relationship that were really haunting me, this was a HUGE step for me, the girl that tries so hard to be guarded opened up her heart. The problem was Ed opened his heart to, and it wasn’t a heart for me, he told me about a past relationship that was going to be a future relationship, I was nowhere in the picture. Obviously I was broken hearted, I had put a lot of time and energy and emotional effort in this relationship that in one instant wasn’t going anywhere. I had been nervous about telling Ed why I was so troubled that day; I knew the potential for heartbreak. I knew that it could go wrong and the whole friendship we had built over many months would dissolve, and dissolve it did.

For a while I tried to push my aching aside, and remain friends, both of our lives got busy yet we still had many overlapping paths. I remember one night several months after our fateful conversation I decided to stop by and try this being normal friends thing again, we hung out and talked until about 2am, things seemed to be going well, although these times were few and far between. Ed just seemed too busy. I still really cared about Ed and every time I spent time with him, it felt like the twisting of a knife, I knew in my heart that it would never work out, but sometimes you carry that hope for a while, but most of all I just wanted my friend back. Things have not been easy down south since I moved back 3 years ago; friends are hard to come by, which has never been a problem for me until now.

In November of that year I totaled my car, injured both of my hands in the accident, I called up Ed to help me salvage stuff from my car, but more than that I needed a friend, Grandpa passed away that thanksgiving, it was a difficult month. Ed did what he could and I really didn’t expect much after all we weren’t together, we were just two people whose paths crossed.

The new year came with our own set of struggles it has been months since our conversation had changed our friendship, it had been months since we really talked, months since we had really been friends, there was enough stuff in our lives some shared difficulties of friends that kept us close proximity wise, but now there were things that were just annoying me. He looked at every interaction, every comment, and every action through the filter of me liking him, as the same girl that told him how I felt half a year earlier. I was enraged. Did he think I was stupid, he said to me as plain as day that we had no future and he was going to seek the future with someone else. Did he think I was an idiot? –Probably not but that’s how it felt. Emotions are a funny thing.

I had tried several attempts to get some people to hang out together to do stuff, I thought it would be good to get to know some other people and just get out of my apartment and do stuff. A few of the attempts had been successful and Ed had even come along. Some attempts have not been so successful. Downright disregard and disrespect for other people, I decided to take a break from organizing and planning, I was lonely and frustrated and not used to not having people in my life. Ed had even said it was a good idea to get together and many others but nobody else had stepped up to take that on. So why after all this time am I still enraged when Ed decides to get the group together? When I invited him out to do something randomly he said that it would be better to get a group together and try and do something, not tonight maybe after some planning. Like salt in a wound, I felt like he had forgotten about my failed efforts and as far as organizing he hadn’t really done anything just kept mentioning it in passing. Then he invites some people to get together, I should be excited, finally something, but I’m incensed, because I’m frustrated. I feel selfish, because this is something I wanted---but I was never invited. Ok I get it you want it to be a guy thing or you want it just to be a couple of people, or maybe you just plain don’t want me—Ok, just tell me the truth. Left to my own imagination who knows what I could come up with. Emotions are a funny thing.

Ed decides to move to a new place, trying to once again be a friend, I having moved 3 times in the last 2 years am very experienced at this process, so I offer my services, mostly moving boxes and such but really however I can help. He says that would be great and I asked him what time I could meet him the next morning and he said he would call me. At about noon I got a phone call, another friend of mine wanted to go to a special lecture on blues music, and I wanted to as well, but I told them no because I had promised to help Ed, and I was sure he was gonna call me anytime. Well he didn’t ever call me. He did it all by himself. Now I’m mad. Not because I gave up a blues lecture, but because as much as I would like to be self sufficient I need help, we all do some people just aren’t convinced yet. Someone had said they needed help and they had that help at their fingertips and they didn’t even have the courtesy to call and say, hey I guess I got it on my own, thanks anyway. And Ed hurt himself in the process because he tried to do too much by himself. So now I feel like one of those napkins you get at the restaurant when you try and grab one but a bunch come out, I’m the one that’s been pulled out but either gets thrown away or shoved in the glove box to check the oil one day several months from now, used but unused.

A few weeks ago, I got a text from Ed, asking me how I was doing in regards to a friend of ours that’s been very sick again and again. I told him I was mad, I told him that I'm tired of doing this, I’m tired of the same thing happening over and over, I’m tired of caring. He asked for my forgiveness because for the whole last year he hasn’t been a friend because of our conversation, he hasn’t been the friend he should have been and he’s sorry. Yeah I’m sorry too, sorry that you lied to me for a year pretending everything was ok and normal while I just felt crazy, stupid and heartbroken trying to deal with this stuff, and Ed pretended it was all in my head, and that our friendship hadn’t really changed at all. What does that mean?! Emotions are a funny thing.

I invited Ed and his family over to my new house. I wanted someone to come visit, I wanted them to see my house, see how hard I've worked, to see what “home” feels like to me. I wanted to once again try this friendship thing again. When I was on my way home Ed called and asked if it was ok if I just came over to his place because it would be too much of an inconvenience for them to come all the way out here (15mins). I went to his place because I needed to not be alone and I wanted to spend time with them, but I cried the whole way there. That little recording that plays inside your head was telling me that I wasn’t good enough, I was inconvenient. That’s not what he meant but that’s what I kept hearing. Emotions are a funny thing.

At the end of all this I wonder why I still care so much, and why I continue to try and why the things Ed does affect me so much more than the things other people do even after a year?!? Why does everything he do hit the most sensitive part every time. Why does he even matter anymore? Why do I keep trying? Why do I care if he hangs out with other friends or if he never comes to see my house? Why do I care now, that he lied to me last year when I knew he was lying the whole time? Why does he always make me feel so worthless and useless and ridiculous? Why do I let him? Emotions are a funny thing.