Don't Push Me!

When you first read the heading here, you probably had images of someone extremely aggravated. Well, there is one word I forgot (ok, so I didn’t really forget) to put at the end. It should read: “don’t push me AWAY!”

Or better yet, I should probably rewrite it to “don’t let them push you away.”

But the fact is that when people in our lives are blocking us out, pushing us away, we can go from mildly upset to the point of feeling like telling them “don’t push me”. Then if you are like me, you start thinking (or acting like) that if they don’t want me around, they don’t want me in their lives, fine!!! They can have it their way.

In fact, at times, I have been the one guilty of doing the “pushing away” to the people in my life.

Having been the offending party before, you would think I would have learned the lesson a lot faster. What can I say. Sometimes it takes one of those “whomps” to get through to me.

Lately, I have been blessed to develop a better understanding of when & why people in our lives push us away.

It’s not really a secret. I finally got it. When people push us away it is simply their way of letting us know that they are hurting in some way, and are afraid that we might figure that out if we get too close. So viola, the farther a hurting person can distance themselves from others in their lives, the easier it is to avoid facing whatever the struggle is.

I use to take this personally (ok, probably still do at times). Now I try to remember that it is not about me but it IS about them. It triggers my radar now to pay closer attention, and more than anything else, make sure to not allow them to push me away. Even if that is hard, challenging, painful.

I pray that the next time you or I get to the point of “don’t push me!” try to remember why they are pushing you away…. So you can make sure that doesn’t happen.