relationships or relationshits

Back in college, on my hall, I remember someone once referring to relationships with a slightly more colorful term- relationshits. Obviously this is because many relationships are full of crap. You deal with their crap, they deal with yours, and sometimes the whole relationship ends up as crap because you treated each other like crap. It's a bunch of crap.

Sometimes I feel like this, but other times I like the "ship" part of relationships better. Yes, please bear with my stereotypical English major grasp at an allegory...I promise it makes sense. Money back. You know, when you are in a boat and it's sailing up and down the waves, and when it's down you wonder if it's going to sink altogether. But then it's up again and it turns out that you are still sailing somewhere. I think relationshiPs only carry us to a destination that God has picked out for us. We might think that they exist for us to feel good and to sail happily across the waves, but I think God just wants us to make it to the other side alive and sanctified.

"That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along-- illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation-- he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him in situations where he will have to be much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."

-C.S. Lewis

Too bad I often forget this and instead freak out when they go wrong.

But today a 6 hour conversation with a ship I thought had sunk 4 months ago helped me understand that it's okay to hoist the anchor and let go. God knows what he's doing. You'll get there, and you might not feel happy the whole time, especially at first, but He is working on the parts of you that need fixing, and sometimes relationships are the best vessel of God's tough love. Even if you have to wait.