When Love Stops Reaching for Control

Releasing relationships

Have you ever noticed how easily love turns into reaching?
Reaching to be understood. Reaching to be seen. Reaching to be filled.

Lately, I’ve been learning what it means to hold relationships without demand—
to stop asking people to meet the needs that belong in God’s hands.

It’s quieter this way.

When I bring my needs to Him first, I no longer need others to bend toward me. I can meet them as they are, without reshaping them to fit my expectations. Love softens; it becomes less about getting and more about seeing.

Bonhoeffer once wrote that when we try to mold community into our own image, we end up crushing both it and ourselves. I understand that now. Real community isn’t something we control; it’s something we receive.

When God fills the cracks, relationships stop being repairs.

They become reflections—places where His wholeness quietly shines through ours.

And it opens the door to curiosity, without intrusion or apology.

Clare Conte reminded me recently that she see people through God’s eyes—meeting them where they are and gleaning from the wisdom, knowledge, and life they’ve lived. People help us grow she says, yes I agree, but not because they make us grow.

They plant. They water.
But God gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).

Growth doesn’t come from people—it comes through them, by God’s grace. Every encounter, whether gentle or hard, becomes part of His cultivating work.

When we trust Him for the increase, we’re free to love without demand and to grow without striving.

The question that I am asking myself and reflecting upon is “where in my relationships is God inviting me to release control and let Him grow what only He can? Boy, is a list developing!