LOVE IS BLIND AND WISDOM IS FAR-SIGHTED
- Jayma Anne Montgomery
- Mar 22
- 5 min read
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Love is blind and wisdom is far-sighted. I don't remember where I heard this, but it came to mind recently when I was reflecting during my morning commute. I was thinking about how being less emotionally invested in our previous pastor's departure insulated me from the many pitfalls that were tripping up my brothers and sisters left and right. It was easier for me to navigate my way around the factions that formed and steer my way out of the gossip wind tunnels that kept sucking people right out of the church. I even wrote an essay about rightly stewarding information that was well received and passed around to church staff and life groups.
I'm sure some people thought I was a fount of clarity and wisdom at the time. Everyone has their moments, I suppose. But what keeps me from having too high of a view of myself is when I read something I wrote and recognize that GOD was in it lending me His wisdom in that specific moment. This same wisdom becomes somehow irretrievable to me at other key moments in life simply because it was never truly mine to begin with. A good friend of mine, someone I have described as "a friend who loves at all times and a sister who was born out of adversity" (Prov 17:7) quoted something I said back to me the other day and I had a similar response. "We should love each other completely, not blindly." The instant she said it, I recognized that those words once came out of my mouth but didn't originate from me. I realized that this is the reason I have been failing to follow my own advice on this for years now.
Blind love can doom our closest relationships when we fail to openly acknowledge our loved ones' flaws and mistakes. It's easy to see how and why this happens in romantic relationships. The high of strong emotions paints the world around this person rose-colored. You can't imagine you might ever see this person differently but if you stay with them for the long haul, that filter eventually comes off. It can be jarring and unpleasant at first. It can even cause you to blame them for misrepresenting themselves. And while this might be true in some cases, it's more often true that our hearts and minds conspired against reason to secure a potential lifelong bond with this person. This happens in non-romantic relationships as well. It can be a close friend, a sibling, a mentor, or a trusted leader. When they make a mistake, offend you, or let you down, it can make or break the relationship. If you are able to recover a healthy view of this person, then it will strengthen the relationship.
I was trying to explain to the same spiritual sister I mentioned earlier how the Anglican church community we are a part of causes me to automatically self-inhibit. Granted, I didn't use the clearest language to convey my sentiments, but she is someone I am accustomed to having a mutual understanding with. We have shared thoughts and opinions on many nuanced things without the convo ever devolving into misunderstanding. But I realized that we had finally hit a wall in our relationship. At first, it made me a little sad that she couldn't fully understand what I was trying to communicate. But then, I realized that this was simply an opportunity to acknowledge that her feet of clay were showing and that mine were being revealed to her as well. I could accept the healthy limits of our friendship or try to contort it into something it was never meant to be. The reality is, that I have other friends and a best friend who have known me far longer and who instinctively grasp how my upbringing and cultural context as a woman of African descent colors my perspective of just about everything. She doesn't see the world that way because she doesn't have to. And now, I can free her from the burden of always having to be right, good, and perfect in my eyes. Only GOD gets to be those things. Perhaps I need to apply this newly discovered wisdom to my marriage-- the relationship in which my blindspots are the biggest and my wisdom is rarely on display.
It's tempting to drown myself in the swirling sea of "shoulda, coulda, wouldas." But perhaps this weary, embattled, fragile person I have become is precisely who I need to be right now. I might have had more stamina in my younger years, but I had no clue how to read the signs that my body was in trouble. I wasn't self-aware enough to slow down, take breaks, or give myself the privilege of experiencing the very real pain I was in. I hadn't earned the patience and lived out the level of suffering I needed to be a good mother to my children. I didn't have a sixteen-year marital track record to look back on and see the patterns of emotional highs and lows my husband was cycling through. I didn't know what it was like on the other side of despair. I truly didn't even know there was hope and healing on the other side of unfathomable grief, that you could be holding a fistful of ashes one day and embracing fullness of joy the next.
What I do know is this: My life is a miracle. My marriage is a miracle. My children are miracles. My devotion to the GOD who sees me and has walked every stretch of this harrowing life with me is a miracle.
If my marriage is going to survive, then the delusions on which we both built it have to die. We are both exhausted by the effort of overcompensating for things our partner has been lacking for eighteen years. No wonder we are wrestling with despair. It's time to see each other in the clear and unfiltered light and find a way to love that person completely but not blindly. Only then can we help each other become the best version of ourselves. This all probably sounds very good and wise. But I will tell you that I am light years away from having the mental and emotional energy to execute this right now. But one day, I will be strong enough again.
And so, I'm offering up my shattered hopes and shredded dreams before El Roi, knowing that as much as I cherish them, they are mere shadows. He is remaking them into something more than scattered light particles my hands can only pass through but never hold. He is making something new and tangible, something alive and enduring. He is resurrecting love.
Stay Thoughtful.
-Jayma Anne
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