Some people’s filters are broken. Whether I say, “I love you” or “I hate you,” they will filter it as “I hate you.” Some people’s filters are healthy. Whether you say, “I love you” or “I hate you,” they will take it as “I love you.” It’s the way we filter what we hear that determines what we truly believe and how we respond to people.
Sometimes, when your filter is healthy, you hear people say, “I hate you,” but you know they mean, “I’m hurting on the inside. I so desperately want to be loved. I’m afraid of being rejected. I’m sitting on the edge of rejection. I feel like you are rejecting me because I haven’t heard from you or you haven’t responded to this, and I feel hurt, isolated, and alone. Because of this, you are the source of my pain, though you’re the one I want to pull the closest. You are the source of my pain, so I hate you.” The healthy filter hears this as: “I need love. I’m not actually mad at you. I want to be close to you, but I don’t know how to express it.”
So they remain. They simply remain. They continue to pursue, and they continue to remain. You can’t change someone’s opinion once they put it through their filter because you can’t instantly replace the filter inside a person. It’s a process. As long as you remain and continue to flip upside-down what they believe about you, then maybe, hopefully, prayerfully, their filter will be made clean and made new.
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