How many friendship frogs have you kissed, dear reader? How many have kissed you? I am easing into a rather touchy subject, the yes and no of relationships and I am tentative, cautiously entering this murky, swampy pond…please keep this in mind as you continue to read.
In my lifetime, I have kissed a lot of frogs, metaphorically speaking, of course! These are the people that we meet, connect with briefly and for whatever reason, we, or they, hop out of our lives. You want them, they don’t want you, they want you, you don’t want them…it is a tricky bit of navigation and can cause guilt in the rejecting, remorse in the injury, hurt in the rebuff. I think of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, the one with Pepe Le Pew, the skunk, and Penelope, the cat Pepe mistakes for one of his kind. It is painful to watch, time and again, the Odoring Skunk, pursuing the repulsed feline who in her misfortune, was given a white paint stripe down her back. The moral of the story here dear reader, is that we have, or at least I have, made the mistake of believing that someone is more similar to me than they actually are…or that my interest in them is equally matched and reciprocated. This mistaken belief can transverse many lines, crossing into business, personal, and family relationships. Here is the lowdown of what I am saying…sometimes you are the skunk, and sometimes you are the cat and we all have experienced both, have we not? The rejection and the rejecting? Here is another truth to be told and grabbed hold of dear one. No means no, whether subtly delivered or screamed in the face, when someone does not want relationship, the choice must be received, respected and abided by, whether or not it hurts. Again, this is tricky to navigate internally because while saying no is hard, hearing it is equally difficult and yet, no spoken and heard releases both parties from barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. So now, we have frogs, skunks, cats and dogs and somewhere mixed in their are the people we long to be with or conversely, be free from-either way dear reader, this is painful stuff.
I could be cavalier here and say what I have said in the past, which is, don’t take this personally but alas, it feels so personal, doesn’t it? No one wants to be thought of as a stench, a wretched smell to another and yet…”For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life…” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). If you are repellant to another because of Christ, you dear reader, are the most extravagant fragrance to God. Accept rejection and know that you are welcomed into relationship by the One, the Only One that counts.
