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Writer's pictureTracie

Moving Mountains

Updated: Oct 30, 2024

I know what it's like to love someone who is toxic.

I know what it's like to love someone who is both the love of your life and your tormenter.

I know what it's like to pray for their healing so they stop hurting you.

I know what it is like to leave someone who is toxic too.


As hard as it may be to understand when you're in this dynamic, love is consistant. It isn't there one minute and gone the next. It's kind and supportive, not destructive. Love allows you to become a better version of yourself. Love doesn't make demands of your time or money. True love does not have conditions, demean, demoralize or belittle. Love does not harm. Love can not harm.


I have made many exceptions and excuses for toxic people in my life. I forgave people of monstrous things out of empathy for their own victimization in childhood or mental illness. I extended many opportunities for healing and transformation that were, unfortunately, never chosen. I reached my final straw moment. The place where my self-respect trumped my empathy. What was left... the only thing that was left to do... was to remove the person from my life.


I prayed about the decision a lot. I suffered with the choice. I struggled with feelings of failure and "not good enough." I thought I was abandoning someone in need and didn't want to cause the suffering of another.


Making the decision to remove someone from my life who was abusive, or extract myself from an abusive relationship, was an act of love. A sacred act of self love. And I am infinitely better for protecting my own peace and safety. I am infinitley better for not self-abandoning or choosing to suffer.


If you're in this space, this is what I learned. Whether you choose to remove a toxic person from your life, limit contact, or by divine miracle the Universe moves you or that person half a world away... life will be better for the distance between you. In time, you will begin to notice how regulated your nervous system feels, how good people show up to fill in the empty space, your radiance, joy and self-confidence will return because the time you gave to distress can be focused on self care, and you know what else? Everything starts to look a little more beautiful in the world without toxic people in the landscape. The "love," companionship, time, possessions, money, or home you lost are nothing compared to what you can gain. I opted to see my own "loss" as a choice thanks to the wisdom of my friend Mana, who so beautifully asked me... "What are you willing to give up to have the life you deserve?"


In case you don't have a healthy perspective of what love should look like, here is one of the oldest teachings from the most widely read book in the world...


"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.


Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."


-1 Corinthians 13, The Bible, New International Version









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