When relationships bite!

As many of you know we have recently taken in a kitten. I am not a cat person but my husband has always wanted a cat and never was able to due to apartment rules. So we have a house now and I figured maybe if got a kitten I would warm up to him. We picked him in the litter because he seemed sophisticated. We named him Edgar Allen Poe and he has become a good friend to me over a lonely summer. Last night I had a dream that I was with a girlfriend in the woods and we saw a cat. I did not understand why she didn't like the cute thing. She told me she never let him get close and didn't like him around. But the cat was coming toward me and I reached out my hand to rub it's neck. But as he touched me I became frightened by the look of him and a shudder went up my spine as the cat did not stop at my arms length. He kept moving toward my face and neck and started making a growling hissing sound. HE WAS GOING TO BITE AND IT WAS TOO LATE TO PREVENT IT! That is where I woke up gasping and rolling backwards in the bed trying to escape. lol. I laid there awake at 5am thinking about my dream. I don't remember dreams often and asked the Lord what it may mean for my heart. I realized that in the dream, all I wanted from that cat was to be loved by it. I think often in relationships in our life we are just longing to be loved so deeply. So often as we move closer into a relationship we want to feel close (it's how God made us). But many times when we soften our guard to let someone in we are making ourselves vulnerable to a "bite". There is nothing worse than letting someone close and then finding that there is just pain and hurt that is reciprocated. I have felt that pain recently by someone close to me and it leaves me with such a deep ache. I feel like I am carrying it around with me all the time and letting it consume my thoughts. I find anger and bitterness that just sits in me until it erupts onto my husband or some poor stranger at Walmart :). Someone once told me that you can't expect balloons to grow from trees. And there are some people who are just not capable of giving us what we need from a relationship. That doesn't mean we should banish them from our lives or refuse to forgive. It just means we must try to not expect as much and realize that we may never get what we want or need from them. I thank God that he has shown me his safe, unfailing love through Christ. He will never fail and his love is "new every morning" (Lamentations 3). And through him I can continue to love those who hurt me (in healthy ways). I can give and give again because Christ did that for me at Calvary...even though I didn't deserve it. And you know what? It is so worth it when we take those risks and they turn out to be surprisingly awesome in our life. So here is to not giving up!