The Gift of Frustration
(I Got Stuck With The
Cat)
Suzanne Luper
Six weeks
ago Joel left for
Well, Joel
put some bait on his hook, and caught a really nice big fish --- in
In trying to
make this situation work to my advantage, which is only natural, I asked one
day, “Hey, do you think that you could take Skippy with you?” Skippy, our elderly cat, has a big place in
Joel’s heart. She doesn’t have much room
in mine. He loves her with a
passion. I tolerate her for his sake,
and because my parents taught me that you shouldn’t be cruel to animals. We tried and tried to figure out how she
could go, but it was not meant to be.
I got stuck
with the cat. And each day I must act in
loving ways toward her, even though I don’t feel like it. Does this portend misery for me? Or is it possible that these daily acts of
kindness (which I would not have chosen, but which are done in the context of
love) Is it
possible that I will be changed? That
some weak muscle in my character will be strengthened? That some new shape of
maturity will be carved, slowly, into my psyche because of the repetitive
friction between resistance and love?
Love is as
love does. Love is not a feeling so much
as it is an action – a process of doing.
It is not a noun, but rather, a verb.
It is not a mood into which we fall.
It is a construction that we carefully and intentionally build over much
time. Of course we know the wonder of attraction, the enchantment of new
love. There’s nothing else quite like it
in the world! But, as Scott Peck says in
his classic book, The Road Less Traveled, that early feeling is nature’s trick
on us. That is the work of pheromones,
or hormones, or whatever primal juices we have oozing through us. The work of love doesn’t start in those early
days of romance when we’re feeling deliriously happy just to be together. It is only later, when the newness has worn
off, when we revert back to personal preferences, when the rigorous demands of
work and the chores of daily life creep back in and establish themselves, that we begin to understand this.
The
Benedictines have a wonderful name for this ongoing work of love. They call it “continual conversion.” To convert means, literally, to turn around,
to change directions. When you fall in
love, there is an initial conversion of sorts, isn’t there? You meet someone, and you turn in direction
and in attitude. But this is just the
first of many necessary turnings if the relationship is to continue to live. “Falling
in love” is replaced by something far richer: a commitment to continual
conversion.
It is this
way with any committed relationship. For
partners, for long-time friends, for parent and child, and even for committed
members of a faith community, there is an initial turn – the joining -- and
then the long process of walking together.
And it is only in this serious undertaking of relationship that true
growth, true maturity is possible. It is
primarily as we begin to meet with one frustration after another – with the
escape hatches closed! – that we are forced to rethink
a belief, to remold an attitude, to reexamine a habit, to reinvent
ourselves. More and more parts of the
self are awakened and called forth in service to the relationship. Continual conversion is the never-ending
process of stretching and widening and deepening the boundaries of the heart.
I recently
read an article by an Episcopal priest, Robert Morris. He says, “Love cannot grow without passing
through various gates of purification. (A nice way of saying, “What doesn’t
kill you makes you stronger.”) Paul says
that love is ‘patient and kind, not irritable or resentful.’ How will we learn this kind of love if we are
never frustrated? How will I find
patience if my impatience is never provoked?
Or learn to handle irritability if never irritated?” It is somewhat comical to think that this
passage gets read most often at weddings, when we know the least about what it
means. This kind of maturity does not
happen overnight. It doesn’t spring
forth, full-blown, on the day we take vows.
And it doesn’t come home with the new baby.
Listen again
to the Corinthians passage, this time in the new
translation by Eugene Peterson called The Message. “Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than the
self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t
have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a
swelled head, doesn’t force itself upon others, isn’t always ‘me first,’
doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score, doesn’t revel when others
grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth . . .” (1 Cor.13:4-6) This is describing
a richness of character that none of us will ever achieve --- but we should die
trying.
Now, before
you think that I am suggesting that only those who are lucky enough to reach
their 50th wedding anniversaries are called into growth, hear me all the way
through. Some commitments don’t
last. We know this. In fact, I used to have a supervisor who
would say, “All committed relationships will end.” People die, and we never dreamt that they
would. People betray us, and we never
thought that they would. We betray those
we love, and we never thought that we could.
And maybe it is at these junctures that we grow most profoundly. These are not minor irritations. These are earthquakes. And when the dust settles, we’re forced to
accept a world that doesn’t look like the one we knew.
In our
relatedness, we are called upon to convert --- to turn again and again and
again, against our own resistance. We
are called upon to change when we don’t want to, to grow when we hadn’t planned
to, to become even larger than the promises we’ve made. Committed relationships
are God’s people growing machines, and as humans, we seem to keep finding our
way back into them. In fact, we yearn for them, even when we’ve been hurt very
badly. Why would we do this?
Perhaps
that is because we were created for relationship by the One who is the author
of commitment, who was committed to us before our birth, who is committed to us
after death and who continues to say to us what was said to the children of
People do
change; love does not. God is faithful.
So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, hear the good news: We are loved
by a God who delights in the making and keeping of committed relationships. We are loved by a God who delights in the
healing of broken relationships. We are
loved by a God who delights in healing those who have been broken by broken
relationships. Thanks be
to God, “who by the power that works within us is able to accomplish abundantly
far more than all we can ask or imagine.”(Eph.3:20)
Suzanne
Luper