Relationship: It Ain't No One-way Street!

Today, I was thinking about an old lesson I learned. I can't quite remember why I was thinking about this particular lesson. I think it was because I was thinking about high school drama and how sometimes one person will keep on trying to kick a dead horse and make a relationship work. High schoolers (and sometimes older people too) just don't realize how unhealthy that is.

Anyway, I was thinking about this lesson. It was a particularly painful lesson, despite its simplicity: it takes two people to make a relationship work. In other words, ONE PERSON CANNOT MAKE A RELATIONSHIP WORK ON HIS OR HER OWN. Yep. . . that's about how loud it had to be to sink into my brain. To make a very long, very painful story short. . . in the past, I did everything humanly possible to make a relationship last, only to learn that you cannot force another person to behave a certain way. If he or she wants to be stupid, you can't change that for him or her--EVEN if you try to pray God's will on his/her life. The problem that you run into is this: God gave us choice. He doesn't force us to do anything. Sometimes when we pray, we ask God to make a person do right. He won't. Man, when I learned that lesson, I really didn't like it. Not one little bit. That, of course, didn't change a thing, except to make me see reality.

Now, since that time, I have been blessed with a wonderful, wonderful man, and I appreciate him so much more due to a very traumatic time in my life, but. . . that's not what I want to talk about. When I revisited that lesson today, it wasn't to think about it in the same old way. Nope. There was a new application. It was. . . well. . . ouch! not such a comfortable application. You see, this time, I was not the one working and working and working to make a relationship work. I was the one who was just doing my own thing, and God was the one who was patiently waiting for me to decide that I wanted to make this relationship work. Ouch! (I told you it wasn't a comfortable application!) Anyway, if you're out there reading this, I hope that it touches you in some way. Tell me what you think. You don't have to agree with me--just remember that I don't have to agree with you either! ;)

So. . now, I've got to remember that a relationship requires a great deal of effort from both parties. It's not about me doing whatever I want and Him dying to reach me. It's about Him dying to reach me and me dying to reach Him.