Unlocking the Horizontal

No, this post is not some recommendation of some bizarre sexual practice.

I am beginning to learn the secrets to unlocking the horizontal potential in my life. I consider my relationship to God to be a vertical one. Even if He's not necessarily 'up', he is definitely one I constantly look up to. Which means that my horizontal relationships are those with people who I can look in the eye every day.

My horizontal relationships have been suffering. For a while. Years even. Perhaps I would do better to say that there has never been a time in which they haven't suffered and that just now I am beginning to see some of them coming around to a place of prosperity. Seriously, my whole life I've been on a journey from the center of the Earth. I've been digging my way out of hurts and places where I can't see the light of day.

And now I am beginning to see myself through the eyes of people that have been in my life before now. It's frightening. It's like I finally realized, only after someone held up a mirror, that I am the Morlock and they are the regular people.

I used to look at people as wrong and myself, of course, as right. And now I finally figured out the basis for that skewed vision. Now I am beginning to see people as neither right nor wrong. I am beginning to see them as people. I have had to go back and apologize to lots of people. Even those people I considered friends. Why? Because with those people I seem to have taken their forgiveness for granted and acted like a real jerk most of the time.

It was never intentional, really, but what I am seeing now is that my issues with most people stemmed from my lack of proper relationship with God. No, I am not talking about salvation here. But rather it's a matter of trust. My failing to trust a God who is ultimately in control is the root for why I can't or won't open myself up to other people.

I'm being very vulnerable here and can absolutely say without a doubt that my actions over the past three decades have been driven out of a desire to avoid being hurt. Which, as my pastor says, is a great gas pedal but a really lousy steering wheel. But that is a post for another day.

Now I am working on seeing God in everyone and treating them as though they are all my friends. Even if they don't know it yet I have to make them see that my heart is towards them, in all things and at all times. A phrase that has killed me, mostly, is "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." It kills me because it sounds cliche and prosaic. It kills me because it sounds like one of those ultra convenient principle reversal slogans. You know the ones. But in this case it has proven absolutely true. In my relationship with everyone. I am beginning to see that nothing in this world is more important than relationships. First and foremost, my vertical one and then, from that my horizontal ones.