BECOMING TENDER IN A TOUGH WORLD.
PART 1.
I figure there are four
basic ways we can approach life in a tough world.
. we can fight it.
We can try to become just as tough as the world is, being defensive and offensive and critical in our relationships, hiding behind a mask made of solid steel, and trying to be always in perfect step with the society .This is the way of the world, the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” the “become number one,” and the “step on anyone who gets your way” style. There’s lots of room for “me” in this lifestyle, but no room for God or anyone else.
. We can become indifferent to it.
Unable to be as tough as the world, we can allow the world to make us unfeeling and uncaring. We develop into programmed robots. Life becomes one dull, dreary routine, holding few, if any, deeply satisfying relationships, and no delightful surprises. In our indifference, we are like lukewarm water; we are neither hot nor cold. We just don’t care. We approach God, others, and ourselves in the same way manner. Indifferently.
. We can run away from it.
In order to cope with the hurt and the pain of a world tougher than we are, we can emotionally escape it. We can lock ourselves in self-made jails, imprisoning our emotions and feelings and not allowing anyone, even God, to enter in. Or we no longer live and feel, but simply exist in a sheltered and protected fantasy word of our own making.
These are sad and lonely ways to approach life. Within them, we never learn how really good life can be. And we can never realize our God- planted potential. We never become the person God has created us to become.
But fortunately, there’s another way to live in a tough world.
. We can become tender to it. It’s the most meaningful way to live because it leads to the most rewarding aspect of life: genuine
Relationship. Becoming tender affects our relationship with God, with others, and with oneself. It’s the way shown to us by Jesus Christ Himself, and its’ by far the hardest way.
“To be sensitive and caring and loving and vulnerable to a world the regards such character as weak and powerless and even foolish involves great risk. Nevertheless, I have come to believe that ,even with the threats of being hurt and rejected and laughed at, becoming tender in all ways is the only way to live and I am finding in my own life that its’ well worth the risk”. I have come to realize that genuine relationship is not built on toughness, but tenderness. It begins by removing the characters we hide, the impenetrable things that I show to the world. What we hide
, yearns for more affection to grow and stand. We must also be vulnerable and accept the risk of hurt and rejection. We must stick our necks out to another. In becoming tender to ourselves and to others, we get to know amazingly close and fully relationship with them, and we exercise this, our relationships get transformed-because we love them more, and we want to feel the same deeper love reaching down to us. As we move to deeper and genuine relationship, the mask and prison holding us back begin to crack, leaving us to experience larger beams of light crushing in. The light begins to warn inside the once lonely place that for so many years have been hidden, and remained cold.
The word tough most often brings to mind undesirable feelings. In relationships, toughness usually indicates a person who does not relate well, strong willed and difficult, rough and even violent. We think of tender as being directly the opposite of tough, yet not all tough is undesirable. Depending on the usage, tough can also mean durable and strong, solid and sturdy, secure and substantial. Married couples do not only need a tender love, but tough uncompromising; love to keep the marriage together. Marriage cannot last unless the love that holds it together is strong and durable, solid and sturdy. Parenting also requires tender and tough love. It’s not easy to rear a child from birth to adulthood, as this requires love that won’t quit, a tough love, to stay with the job of child-upbringing. Remaining morally stable also requires tough and uncompromising values and beliefs that will not lead us to what the world offers, selfish choices. As far as tenderness works, it should not be confused with foolishness or stupidity.
We can escape the prisons of unwanted toughness. We can unlock the door that keeps us at distance from genuine relationships. Each of has the key, and the key is tenderness. Being tender in a tough world is the only way to live.