Last month, I published a post titled We Don’t Let People Hurt Us; We Trust Them Not To. Often, when someone treats us badly, the first thing we do is blame ourselves for “letting” it happen. However, I believe rather than blaming ourselves, we should learn to show ourselves some grace and remember putting our faith in others doesn’t mean we gave them permission to hurt us. It means we trusted them not to.
I received a number of messages following that post which provoked a great deal of thought and some interesting and heartfelt conversations. One of those conversations took place with Robert W. from Wilmington, North Carolina.
Robert had been divorced and single for seven years when he finally met “The One”. He fell head over heels and knew it was meant to be, and a year later, they were married. But something didn’t feel right. Six months after they’d purchased a new home and started a new life, the love of his life left him. Robert was destroyed, but not surprised. In his message to me, he wrote: “Usually that voice in our head is telling us something is wrong, but we just ignore it. So, in a way, it is our fault.”
We all know that little voice Robert was speaking of. We all have it, and we’ve all heard it. Sometimes it’s nothing more than an inkling, a nagging feeling tugging at the back of our mind. Other times, it’s a megaphone broadcasting its message loud and clear in inescapable decibels. Either way, in so many situations, and most often in relationships, we ignore what that inner voice is telling us, and we go about our way. This seems such a common occurrence that I have to wonder, when that voice is speaking to us, why don’t we listen?
