LONG
DISTANCE LOVE
By Bo Sanchez
By Bo Sanchez
Sometimes, we have to
love people from a distance.
The verse above says that we can actually walk away from difficult people. Don't stay if people don't like you. And don't take their rejection personally, because it's not about you. They've got issues. Leave them in the hands of God.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine you're walking in the woods one day. There, you hear someone shouting, "Help!” You run to the direction of the voice, and you see a man sinking in a quicksand. And he says, "Please! Grab my hand! I'm going to die!”
You study your choices. The sinking man is right smack in the middle of a humongous quicksand. To grab his hand, you have to actually walk into the quicksand. If you do that, the man will pull you into the quicksand — and both of you will die.
You realize that the only way to save him is to maintain your distance from him and maintain your position of stability. Practically, it means standing on solid ground and throwing him a rope. The man grabs on the rope, ties it around his body, and from your position of stability, you pull him out of the quicksand. And this point is important — he has to do something. He has to actually do something (tie the rope around his body and hold on). In other words, he should want to be rescued.
I repeat: That's the only way to rescue him. In the same way, you can't transform a difficult person by allowing yourself to be abused by him. That is why the first step to transform a difficult person is to protect yourself from him or her.
By protecting yourself, you gain the freedom to love the difficult person in a genuine way.
The verse above says that we can actually walk away from difficult people. Don't stay if people don't like you. And don't take their rejection personally, because it's not about you. They've got issues. Leave them in the hands of God.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine you're walking in the woods one day. There, you hear someone shouting, "Help!” You run to the direction of the voice, and you see a man sinking in a quicksand. And he says, "Please! Grab my hand! I'm going to die!”
You study your choices. The sinking man is right smack in the middle of a humongous quicksand. To grab his hand, you have to actually walk into the quicksand. If you do that, the man will pull you into the quicksand — and both of you will die.
You realize that the only way to save him is to maintain your distance from him and maintain your position of stability. Practically, it means standing on solid ground and throwing him a rope. The man grabs on the rope, ties it around his body, and from your position of stability, you pull him out of the quicksand. And this point is important — he has to do something. He has to actually do something (tie the rope around his body and hold on). In other words, he should want to be rescued.
I repeat: That's the only way to rescue him. In the same way, you can't transform a difficult person by allowing yourself to be abused by him. That is why the first step to transform a difficult person is to protect yourself from him or her.
By protecting yourself, you gain the freedom to love the difficult person in a genuine way.
