In the meantime, here are some thoughts that I had while I was with my family.
You know how they say that it's those who are closest to us who can hurt us the most deeply? Well, I think it's true. More importantly, the reverse is true. We can hurt those closest to us more deeply than others can.
What I realised while spending time with my family was: it is quite possible to think you are showing care for a person and actually be hurting and destroying them instead. I know I was guilty of this. Basically, while I thought I was caring for my family by wanting to see them become better, and whole, I was starting to only see them by everything in them that needed to become whole - everything that needed fixing.
Now I do think that love in its true nature cannot want anything less than perfection for its beloved. I like how C.S. Lewis puts it: "Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal." We still have to care about helping each other get rid of our laziness, anger problems, selfishness, etc. Still, the lines between caring and fault-finding can easily become blurred when our hearts are not right. It's only too normal for us, when a problem arises in any relationship, to use the pretext of 'caring' to focus on the faults of the other party, because 'we want to see them become better'. With all the best intentions to begin with, we become used to speaking out the worst in them, and we conveniently forget the amazing gift of a person that they are. Thing is, the more we continue in this pattern, the more we will start to only see the worst in the other person. Over time, the situation will no longer be the problem - the person will have become the problem. Who they are will have become the very cause of our vexation - and which human being can be expected to last long under that kind of pressure?
While I was thinking about this in Singapore, I found myself recalling this thought (from a book that I read over a year ago, while I was in China):
"You will find that the people who influence you are the people who believe in you." - Henry Drummond
I remember thinking about it, and finding it true in my own life. I think it has been the people who have seen value in me, even when I haven't been able to see it in myself, who have influenced me the most. They've spurred me on and made me want to grow as a person.
It made me realise that the opposite is also true: if we try to influence people to change by just pointing out all the things in them that need to change, we'll just end up alienating ourselves from them. Parents probably do this to their teenage kids all the time.
This isn't to say that there isn't a place for constructive criticism, but the spirit must be one of love. This is the rest of Henry Drummond's quote on sincere love:
"Love 'thinketh no evil'...but 'rejoiceth in the truth.' Sincerity includes the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weaknesses of others, but "covers all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavours to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced."
So...this was a lesson that I wanted to remember.
May our love cover over a multitude of sins.
While I was thinking about this in Singapore, I found myself recalling this thought (from a book that I read over a year ago, while I was in China):
"You will find that the people who influence you are the people who believe in you." - Henry Drummond
I remember thinking about it, and finding it true in my own life. I think it has been the people who have seen value in me, even when I haven't been able to see it in myself, who have influenced me the most. They've spurred me on and made me want to grow as a person.
It made me realise that the opposite is also true: if we try to influence people to change by just pointing out all the things in them that need to change, we'll just end up alienating ourselves from them. Parents probably do this to their teenage kids all the time.
This isn't to say that there isn't a place for constructive criticism, but the spirit must be one of love. This is the rest of Henry Drummond's quote on sincere love:
"Love 'thinketh no evil'...but 'rejoiceth in the truth.' Sincerity includes the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weaknesses of others, but "covers all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavours to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced."
So...this was a lesson that I wanted to remember.
May our love cover over a multitude of sins.
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