A New Challenge

“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” ~ Isaac Newton

When I take the time to reflect on my life I see that I’ve built far more walls than bridges. I like to hide my emotion and my feelings behind a wall. I find myself putting up walls often, even with the people who are closest to me. I don’t like to share my feelings with other people.  I tend to think of my wall as a one way mirror. I am usually more than happy to listen to people in my life. I like to be able to try to help them anyway I can but when it comes to me doing the sharing I don’t. I cover my emotion with jokes and trying to make others laugh and feel good even when I don’t always. I wouldn’t say I’m heavily depressed or sad or anything like that. I have my own struggles just like everyone else has I just don’t like opening up about them. I tend to bottle things up instead until I’m put into the position where I feel comfortable enough to share something which isn’t often.

I don’t want to say I live in a place with only walls though. When I reflect on my life I do find some bridges. There are the bridges that were built long ago and used to be strong and beautiful for a period of time. Now when I look at them I see a decaying bridge that hasn’t been walked across in a while. They bring happy memories and make me miss those connections that will never be forgotten. I also see the remains of the bridges that weren’t good for me. Those can bring some harder memories. I look at most of those and see that even when the bridge was in it’s prime it was still made with a weak connection and I don’t know a lot about bridges but I know if they don’t have a solid connection they will fail when any weight is put on them. Although I wouldn’t necessarily want to revisit those bridges, I try to not regret those them  because I know God put them in my life for a reason and I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. 

I take a look past those old, decaying bridges. I look past the unsafe bridges and the ones I’ve burned. I see a different kind of bridge. These are large, sturdy bridges. They have thick cabling and huge towers the size of skyscrapers giving them the strongest connections. Most are only a couple of years old and one or two are even newer but when I take the time to look at these bridges and these connections, it reminds me of how truly blessed I am to have them. That’s why I get confused when I struggle to open up to even my strongest bridge. 

I’m challenging myself during this current season of my life to be more open. I’m challenging myself to put up less walls and build more bridges and find common ground with people. I know there are many like me that would rather build a wall than be vulnerable and put in the extra work to craft a bridge so I encourage everyone to do this challenge with me.

I feel that we are called not to put up walls to protect ourselves but we are called to build bridges to reach others.