I just had dinner with a friend who’s relationship of a few months is on it’s last leg. Communication failed and the lines got blurry pretty quick – she can’t believe how quickly it went from “fairytale” to “goodbye…for now.” When things got complicated, time got strained, and communication got tricky, the bottom dropped out.
I think most of us, in friendships, romantic relationships, work relationships, whatever, have had some kind of experience where we can relate to this situation. Coming out of it, we feel devastated, angry, confused… all kinds of things. Even if we get the facts and can actually make sense of what happened, we still are left asking: what the CRAP happened?! Relationships just plain stink sometimes.
My pastor is doing a series on relationships that has been awesome. But I haven’t just had his notes to get me pondering; in these past few weeks I’ve been surrounded by living examples of good relationships having hard times: marriages hanging by a thread, friends that don’t quite make sense to one another anymore, people bailing on responsibility and commitment, not sure what they want, except that they want to be free to decide for themselves.
In many of these situations there are extreme or extenuating circumstances. But most of our everyday problems with one another seem to fall into a basic category, which my pastor pointed out: failed expectations. Another one, I think, is “sharing your stuff” – and I don’t mean furniture, either.
As a single of 23, I can fully understand the sentiment of wanting to be free to decide on my own, as I’m sure most of us can. It’s a big enough deal to know who you are, what you want out of life, and how you want to go about living it. Try combining all of that with someone else who (hopefully!) has all of that put together for themselves, and it’s like two weather fronts coming together and making a storm! BOOOOMM!!! Holy crap! From emotional perspectives and responses to communication styles, to how you spend your free time and how the socks are folded, it’s a whirlwind of change and a struggle to find a middle ground (or, sometimes selfishly, to define our own, dangit!)
And what about hard times? What about facing the tough stuff that life throws at us, or – what I was referring to earlier – sharing the tough stuff in our own selves with someone else? (eek!) If you’ve lived a little bit you can get an idea of just how daunting that can be. And, you can probably get why people abandon ship.
A friend of mine said during a prayer last week, “relationships are messy, because we’re messy people.” Yep. So what do we do? Am I ready? Do I want this? Can I do this?
I do believe this, with all my heart, and Tim said this back in the beginning of this series on relationships – God needs to be the center of the relationship for it to make it out of all the stuff we can go through. The best thing I can do for my friends, my family, my spouse, my co-workers, all the people in my life, is to make God the center of my life, letting Him deal with me and know me from the inside out, and help me learn to grow up a little. That’s something to keep up every day.
We all would probably start seeing some changes in ourselves and in our relationships if we could learn to do that – to let God work on us and love and grow us from the roots up. That isn’t an easy relationship either - if anyone is going to hold you accountable, show you where you need improvement, or let you know where you’ve made a mistake, God will! But what a wonderful thing it is when we let Him do that. He always makes it so worth while.
We need relationships. Even with all their strangeness and ugliness, they’re where such beauty is to be found. We weren’t made to do this thing called life alone, guys. So hold on to God first - He will show us how to stick it out with one another. With Him, there’s always hope… what a comfort that is.
