Relationships are...

...complicated.

Life is all about relationships. Your relationship with God. Your relationship with you parents and your siblings. Relationships with your friedns, your co-workers, other church memebers, class mates, the checkout lady. They're everywhere. And I don't know about you, but in my experiance they are the best and most complicated thing about life. Without relationships I wouldn't be here...see my mom met my dad...and well, I guess you get the rest... :o) And you're pretty much stuck with your family. Which is both really cool and often not so much. See, your family is your family and no matter how much they want to disown you (or vise versa) they can't. Being an only child I have often envyed those of you who have siblings. I know you may not like them all the time, but they are connected to you in a way different from any other relational connection. Love them always and like them when you can :o) Then there are your friends...in this relationship there has to be a continual, mutual choice for relationship. And I s'pose this is where the most complication comes in to play. Well, I got lucky, see, I have this friend who right from the beginning we settled on the choice to make the continual, mutual thing a lifetime thing. We sort of eliminated the whole option to "get out"...(see, in normal friendships there is always the option of ending the relationship...a person moves away and you never talk again...you both get busy and neither takes inititive to call...there's a huge fight and both parties are hurt and neither wants to put in the effort it will take to mend...) I guess what I'm saying is that God gave me something better than the sibling I so desparatly wanted and even better than the friend I thought I needed, he gave me both rolled into one and I love her. Anyway, I digress...then there are romantic relationships and I am certainly not the expert in this department (being that I've never been in one) but from the ones I've seen they may be the most complicated yet. do I like him? does he like me? if we both like each other where do we go from here? ok we've been dating for a while how do we know we're ready to get married...and I s'pose it could just go on and on...maybe, if I'm lucky, one day I'll find out first hand just how complicated those relationships can be...but for now I want to nurish the relationships God has put in my life right now. I just don't always know how...Love God; Love people, right??? well, that's what I want to do...my prayer is that God would help me balance the relationships he's given me and help me to manage the time I have to glorify Him through each and every one of them...I'm learning to love my family more (and sometimes that can be really hard); and I'm learning to communicate with some of my coworkers which has taken me a really long time in some cases; and I've had some time to help a friend in need which is great b/c I like to be helpful; I've gotten to spend more time with some really great friends who I hadn't had real conversations with in a long time, and it's been really awesome to be part of their lives again; I miss some of my friends, 'cause we have a hard time finding time for just us, but I'm not done trying to make the time to spend with them...

...God, thank You for the relationships You've given me. Help me not to take any of them forgranted and help me to love you and to love others through them--I want to worship You with my relationships.