Staying Connected When Love Isn’t Easy
This month, I am asking an honest question: Have you ever quietly quit on someone?
A stranger.
A friend.
A neighbor.
Someone you loved.
Yes…UGH!
Not officially.
Not loudly.
Not with some dramatic announcement.
You just stopped moving toward them.
Maybe they do not think like you. Maybe they do not believe as you do. Maybe their personality wears you out. Maybe their choices grieve you. Maybe their opinions offend you. Maybe their narrow-mindedness frustrates you. Maybe they are difficult, self-absorbed, argumentative, or just plain hard to love.
So you pull back.
You disconnect.
You avoid.
And if you are honest, you may even justify it.
“They are impossible.”
“They do not get it.”
“They never listen.”
“They are too much.”
“They are not going to change.”
It is pretty easy to quit on people who do not line up with us.
It is easy to love people who love us back, agree with us, affirm us, and make us comfortable. But Jesus never called us to love only the people who are easy for us to love.
He calls us to something much deeper.
The Apostle Paul wrote:
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Ephesians 4:2
That phrase — bearing with one another in love — is both beautiful and challenging.
Paul does not say, “Bear with one another as long as they agree with you.” He does not say, “Be patient with people who appreciate you.” He says, be patient, bearing with one another in love.
That phrase assumes something important:
Some people require extra patience.
And if we are honest, sometimes we are those people too.
If everyone were easy to love, patience would not be necessary. If every relationship stayed comfortable, selfless, and gentle, loving others would be easy.
Real relationships are not always easy.
People disappoint us.
People disagree with us.
People frustrate us.
People lash out at us.
People hurt us without fully understanding what they have done.
People disconnect from us.
And into that reality, God calls us to patience.
Not the kind of patience that grits its teeth and tolerates people from a distance. Not the kind that avoids hard conversations and calls it peace.
Biblical patience is much deeper than that.
Patience is the Spirit-formed ability to stay lovingly connected to people who are not easy for us to love, are not quick to understand us, and may never become who we wish they were.
Or said another way:
Patience is love that stays open-hearted toward people we would rather close our hearts to.
That is not natural for most of us.
Most of us prefer relationships that feel easy, safe, and affirming. We tend to stay close to people who understand us, agree with us, and make life pleasant.
But God’s love reaches farther than that.
Jesus said in Matthew 9:10–12:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
That statement should stop us.
It should stop our self-righteousness. It should stop our tendency to only love people who are easy to love. It should stop our habit of distancing ourselves from messy, difficult, broken, or frustrating people. It should stop us from acting as though someone’s viewpoint or behavior disqualifies them from our call to live-connected.
Jesus did not move only toward the pleasant, polished, agreeable, and religiously acceptable people. He moved toward the broken, the confused, the sinful, the rejected, the misunderstood, the ashamed, the self-righteous, and the hard to love.
He moved toward people others had already written off.
And He moved toward me.
Before I decide someone else is too difficult to love, I need to remember how patient Jesus has been with me.
He has not abandoned me because I am slow to learn.
He has not shamed me every time I repeat a struggle.
He has not walked away because I am not growing fast enough.
He has not quit on me when I have been difficult, stubborn, selfish, or hard-hearted.
He convicts.
He corrects.
He teaches.
He restores.
But He does it as a loving Savior who remains faithful even as I am still being formed and at times unlovable.
My son Lee taught me this in a way I am still learning.
Lee had a way of moving toward people I might have avoided. He connected with people who were different from him, people who were hurting, people who were difficult, and even people who were narrow-minded or unwilling to accept others easily.
Where I might have pulled away, Lee often leaned in.
He challenged me more than once to embrace people who were not like me — not as projects to fix, but as people to love.
And I have to confess, he was right.
There have been times when I have quit on people because they did not think the way I thought, believe the way I believed, or respond the way I wished they would. My circle stayed smaller because I preferred relationships that felt easier, safer, and more familiar.
Lee’s circle was bigger.
Not because he agreed with everyone.
Not because he approved of everything.
Not because he had no convictions.
But because he knew how to make people feel loved even when they were different.
That is patience.
Not patience that waits for people to become more like us.
Patience that makes room in our hearts for people who may never become easy for us.
That is hard.
Because disconnection usually feels justified when someone is difficult.
Sometimes we call it wisdom. And sometimes boundaries really are necessary. There are relationships where access must be limited for safety, health, or wisdom. Patience does not mean we approve of what is wrong, allow destructive behavior, or pretend harmful things are harmless.
Patience is not weakness.
Patience is not denial.
Patience is not enabling.
Patience is not the absence of boundaries.
Patience allows us to have boundaries without becoming bitter. It allows us to use wisdom without becoming prideful. It allows us to disagree without devaluing the person. And it allows us to recognize real differences without letting those differences close our hearts.
Because once our hearts close, connection usually leaves.
And connection is where healing begins.
This is why patience is so essential to living-connected.
Living-connected does not mean we only connect with people who are pleasant, agreeable, emotionally healthy, or easy to understand.
It means we learn how to remain lovingly present even when someone is difficult.
It means we listen before we label.
It means we become curious instead of critical.
It means we offer empathy instead of judgment.
It means we encourage what is possible instead of only pointing out what is wrong.
And it means we stay connected to God because we cannot love difficult people well without first realizing God’s patience with us.
Sometimes people may not change the way we hope. They may not ever fully understand us, or agree with us. They may not become less difficult. They may not become our kind of person.
And still, God calls us to love.
Not to agree with everything.
Not to approve of everything.
Not to give everyone the same level of access to our lives.
But to love.
To stay humble.
To stay gentle.
To stay open-hearted.
To remember that people are souls before they are opinions, personalities, behaviors, or problems.
That is where patience does its deepest work.
Patience keeps us from reducing people to categories:
Liberal.
Conservative.
Difficult.
Selfish.
Immature.
Argumentative.
Controlling.
Too much.
Not my kind of person.
The moment we reduce someone to a category, it becomes much easier to disconnect from them.
But people are not categories.
They are image-bearers.
They are souls.
They are people Jesus moved toward.
And if I am going to be more like Him, I have to ask where I have stopped moving toward people He still loves.
So maybe the question for May is not simply:
“Am I a patient person?”
Maybe the better question is:
Who have I stopped bearing with in love?
Who have I quietly quit on?
Who have I decided is too difficult, too different, too broken, too opinionated, too narrow-minded, or too unlikely to change?
Who have I loved only from a distance because moving toward them would be harder and too sacrificial.
Paul’s words do not give us an escape clause:
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Humility reminds me that I am not always right.
Gentleness reminds me that people are not projects.
Patience reminds me that love often requires endurance.
And bearing with one another in love reminds me that connection is not only for people who make connection easy.
Patience does not ask us to pretend people are easy.
It asks us to love them while they are still unfinished.
It asks us to stay open-hearted toward people we would naturally avoid.
It asks us to resist the easy drift toward disconnection.
It asks us to remember that Jesus came for the sick, the broken, the difficult, and the hard to love.
People like them.
People like me.
That is patience, bearing with one another in love.
That is living-connected.