Photo Restoration :: Relationship Restoration

The Lord is using my skills as a photo restorer to speak to me about relationships. This is an 'in-process' teaching, but I need to record some of what I am hearing.

Some of the tools of a photo restorer are:

• healing brush -- to make a scratch or spot blend in to its surroundings
• clone stamp -- to duplicate an area of a photo to another spot
• mask -- to keep some part of a photo from being visible
• fill -- to fill a selected area with a certain color or texture
• lasso -- to surround an area of interest to make a selection

I find myself, especially after a few days of work, looking at the world around me as if I could 'restore' it. I see a scratch on a wall and think how great it would be to use the healing brush to make it blend into the surrounding paint. I see a patch of carpeting that is worn and think about how easy it would be to just 'clone' the good part of carpet over the worn part. Doing these things to a computer file are one thing, but I know that no such tools exist to do the repairs to physical objects.

Yet, I find myself thinking how great it would be to use a healing brush to repair hurt feelings, or a clone stamp to copy a good part of a relationship to a messy part of a relationship. This is where I get on shaky ground.

The Lord has been showing me that I think in these terms for relationships, and that it is dangerous to make such restorations sound "easy" when they are really very complex. Not only that, but it makes me think I can control the whole situation by myself. Very self-centered!

In reality, it "takes two" to restore a broken or hurt relationship. And I can't control the other person. My way of thinking, making it easy, making it only my job -- sets me up for failure.

...By using masks, we can hide a part of ourselves from others. Sometimes this is necesary, like at work. But we have the tendancy to also mask our feelings from others. On top of that, we assign our own motivations to the masks others wear. Now we have misunderstanding.

...Sometimes I want to "lasso" a part of the life of a loved one and just "fill" it with my understanding or values. Doesn't work, but I keep on doing just that.

One part if this current teaching is the full knowledge that God does have the ability to "heal" our hurts and restore relationships. He doesn't do it the same way we have designed software to do it. NO, He uses His Spirit to touch our hearts and draw us into Himself to see for ourselves what needs to be changed in us. This can cause us to run away from His Holiness, but if we persevere and ask HIm for help, He will change our hearts and heal our wounds.

I know there is more on this topic, but that is all I have for right now!