Relationships.

When I think of the word relationship I for some reason imagine a young boyfriend and girlfriend who are not that committed to one another and stay together just because. It's like a middle school love or when you hear a guy say, "Oh yea so I'm in this relationship..."in a very negative tone..that's what I picture. I'm not sure why this is, but my false idea of what a true relationship is has impacted my real relationships. I rarely ever think of relationships as me and my family, me and my boyfriend, me and my friends, me and acquaintances, or me and a stranger.

The topic of relationships has come up quite often in the past few weeks. It seems to be the underlying theme of August. In church- "You must reconcile your relationships." In Orientation for Food for the Hungry- "the relationships we have are the most important things and the best way to learn and grow is to have strong relationships." "Poverty is the result of broken relationships." In Flagstaff-My sister Melissa and I had about a 3+ hour conversation on relationships with boyfriends, husbands, families.

As these connections with people I care about reveal themselves as relationships I have realized that I am not doing a very good job at maintaining them.

I have not been as honest as I should be with the people I deeply love.

I have not been trying hard enough to see the people I care about.

I have not been listening attentively to the people I meet.

I have not been forgiving the people who have been close to me since I was young.

..the list could go on..

Over the course of these 4 months I have set a list of goals for myself (the final list is coming soon) and reconciling, maintaining, and creating strong relationships has just been added to the list.

Everyone I meet is a relationship, whether I know their last name or not, therefore I will treat every person with the same love, attentiveness, and compassion. I'm done starting to sew a relationship and leaving it after the third stitch. I'm done leaving empty holes in relationships where there should be forgiveness to repair them. And I'm done unraveling the ones that are holding on by a thread.