be soft
My massage therapy mentor said two of the most convicting words I have ever heard. We were sitting at breakfast one morning and she looked me directly in the eye as I was saying something and she just said, "Be soft." She is a very perceptive woman, so I'm sure that she knows this is something that I have difficulty with even though I don't think I have ever told her that.
Being soft. Not my strong suit. Softness requires vulnerability. And vulnerability automatically comes with a risk of being hurt. Being hurt. Probably the thing I fear most, and yet it is inevitable. We are broken people living in a broken world and our brokenness means that we will hurt each other even as hard as we try not to.
And so my defense is to be hard because if I get hurt then I can speak harshly and act like that person doesn't matter to me because the fact that they hurt me means I don't matter to them.
Of course, when it is written out, said out loud like that I can immediately see the flaws in my logic. I can see the problem in my stream of thought. It is easy to convince my brain of the correct logic. I live in a broken world with broken people. Just because someone hurts me doesn't mean that I don't matter to them.
But a wise woman once told me that the heart is illogical.
It doesn't listen to my brain's logic. It remembers the past. My heart remembers the lessons learned the hard way and has no desire to repeat them. It remembers why I stopped being soft in the first place. Boys who should have been protective and a wall for me instead were hurtful, demeaning, and less than kind. Girls who should have been nurturing and life giving were instead manipulative, catty and back stabbing.
I started being soft again. It took years to get back to a point where I was soft, vulnerable, willing to risk investing my heart deeply in people. But lately, I have heard the old me, the hard me creeping back into my voice, my thoughts, my conversations.
That's why those two words cut right to the heart of me. Be soft. I am in a place right now where I feel like I need a daily reminder of that. Daily right now I am having to choose to be soft with people. The difficult part of that is that usually I don't even realize I am being harsh until the words leave my lips, and then they are already out. I am working on it. Thank goodness I'm not done yet.
Being soft. Not my strong suit. Softness requires vulnerability. And vulnerability automatically comes with a risk of being hurt. Being hurt. Probably the thing I fear most, and yet it is inevitable. We are broken people living in a broken world and our brokenness means that we will hurt each other even as hard as we try not to.
And so my defense is to be hard because if I get hurt then I can speak harshly and act like that person doesn't matter to me because the fact that they hurt me means I don't matter to them.
Of course, when it is written out, said out loud like that I can immediately see the flaws in my logic. I can see the problem in my stream of thought. It is easy to convince my brain of the correct logic. I live in a broken world with broken people. Just because someone hurts me doesn't mean that I don't matter to them.
But a wise woman once told me that the heart is illogical.
It doesn't listen to my brain's logic. It remembers the past. My heart remembers the lessons learned the hard way and has no desire to repeat them. It remembers why I stopped being soft in the first place. Boys who should have been protective and a wall for me instead were hurtful, demeaning, and less than kind. Girls who should have been nurturing and life giving were instead manipulative, catty and back stabbing.
I started being soft again. It took years to get back to a point where I was soft, vulnerable, willing to risk investing my heart deeply in people. But lately, I have heard the old me, the hard me creeping back into my voice, my thoughts, my conversations.
That's why those two words cut right to the heart of me. Be soft. I am in a place right now where I feel like I need a daily reminder of that. Daily right now I am having to choose to be soft with people. The difficult part of that is that usually I don't even realize I am being harsh until the words leave my lips, and then they are already out. I am working on it. Thank goodness I'm not done yet.
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