Transparency & Relationships

I have been thinking a lot about relationships lately and how different they can  be.

 
Some can never get past the surface and into the heart. Others can go to your very core in no time at all. And then there are those relationship that SHOULD be the deepest, but yet they never really SEE you at all. And I have had a few realizations as to why that has happened in my life.

I had never really experienced for myself truly deep relationships until about 3 years ago. Until that time I was never really good with being completely honest with myself. I mean, I was a really good pretender even with myself. And I could often convince myself that I was being honest with me. But God changed all that when He showed me my own heart.

When God told me how much He loved me even though my heart was ugly, that's when I knew it was ok to start being transparent with myself. 

And that was the beginning of the deepest relationships I have ever known.

I remember watching the movie Avatar for the first time and being so moved when she says "I see you". Because it was the first time I realized that some people will never truly SEE me. Most of the time its not because they don't want to see me, but rather, they just can't. All they can see are their judgments of me and my choices on the outside. So they never get past the surface.

To truly see someone, you must look past your own judgments and be willing to understand their heart.

Regardless of whether or not you agree. 

I recently had someone admit to me they were having an affair. And for the first time in my life I knew God had done some major renovation on my heart. Because I knew that if I was hearing them reveal these things to me 5 years ago all I would be thinking is what a horrible thing they were doing. All of my judgments of their actions would be all I could hear in my head. But on this day, as they were sharing their heart with me, I had NO judgments. Truthfully, my thoughts were "He who is without sin, cast the first stone" How could I condemn their actions and point out the beam in their eye, I had a beam or two in my own! So I just wrapped my arms around them and told them I loved them.

Transparency is a beautiful and frightening thing. When you can be honest about anything, your fears, faults, struggles, past, future etc and that person looks at you with all the love in the world and says "I understand, and I still love you"; there is freedom. Transparency requires you to take off the mask of "I got it all together and we are doin fine" and just lets your heart be free to love, and to be loved. And as a result, allows your heart to heal! And the relationships that bloom from this transparency is something I am now experiencing for the very first time.

People who "see" me. 

But I have also come to understand that these relationships that require transparency to grow, are just a copy of the type of relationship that God wants with us. He wants us to "see" Him.  But the best part about that is that He never looks at you any different and He will love on you in a way you have never known. And your relationship with Him will become one deeper than anything you have ever known. Because it will go straight to your core!

So..... I would like to make a toast!

 I am learning to see people with new eyes. Eyes God has given me, eyes that do not see what they used to. Maybe even starting to see what God can see. And just maybe one day, God will give "eyes to see and ears to hear" to those people who have never really seen me. 

Here is to all of us becoming a little more transparent, and a lot less judgmental!!