There’s hardly a kinder gift we can be to another person than be a safe person; with
them and for them. Where we can neither hurt each other nor be hurt by one
another.
The counsellor is quintessentially a safe
person. They provide an inviting and open space—implicit with safety—for the
client to partake in their therapy of healing. It’s the client’s process the counsellor works with, not the
other way around.
Not many of us are professional counsellors,
but God calls us all to care for people in such ways as to develop and deploy
some of the counsellor’s skill set.
We call this love.
Trusting and Enjoying the Safe Person
We all need safe people in our lives; people
who we can trust, who will listen to us, and who will give us good advice when
we either seek it or need it.
We all know that feeling when somebody gives
us advice and we haven’t asked for it. It feels like an intrusion and we think
we are suffering pride; no, perhaps it’s a matter that our personal dominion is
compromised—we don’t feel safe; we don’t feel relaxed; we are defensive and we
don’t want to be.
Trusting and enjoying the safe person is about
finding such a person. Then it is about simply relaxing with them, and being
ourselves. It is God’s will that we are able to be ourselves, without pretence,
masks or walls. We can only really be ourselves around safe people, unless we are the safe person—in which case we can be
ourselves anywhere.
The Greatest Gift of God to Ourselves
Could it just be that just is willing us to
become safe people—to be with, to enjoy the journey of life around? Could it be
that this ‘calling’ to be a safe person might be the greatest of God’s gifts to
us—a gift directly sponsored of the Holy Spirit? I tend to think so. In fact, I
know so.
It’s the greatest gift to ourselves because of
the tangibility of the relationship scenario.
God reinforces the idea of love, helping us to
love and be loved, in the context of our relationships. We need to experience
love in relationships in order to enjoy the confidence of living the full,
abundant life.
When we venture on a journey to becoming a
safe person—by embracing our own healing—which is tackling and accepting our own
truths (yes, the sordid ones)—our experience of love abounds. Love is the
greatest gift and becoming a safe person is the way to enjoy the presence of
such a gift.
***
The safe person is one we trust and enjoy and
can be ourselves around. We can share with them and they listen and their
advice feels safe and wise. But we too can be safe people; indeed, it may be
God’s greatest gift that we would nurture within ourselves the notion of
becoming or being a safe person to be around.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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