Relationships...

We are made for relationship. I think that statement is a pretty obvious one. We are not all made for the same kinds of relationships, or the same amount, but we all must have them in some respect or go nuts. When people aren't around we hang out with dogs; man's best friend. When dogs aren't around and people aren't around we get on the internet or a video game. If all else fails we start talking to beach balls and go running with wolves.
There are a lot of different kinds of relationships. There are one way relationships where you give all and receive nothing in return, or where you receive all and give nothing in return. There are symbiotic relationships, casual relationships, deep relationships, committed relationships, and short relationships. There are the kinds of relationships that spawn from love or duty, and there are the kinds you wish you didn't have at all. We seem to have relationships with our ideals; we find it hard to separate from them. We even seem to have relationships with stuff, as what we surround ourselves with may become a piece of what defines our reality. We shape our lives around something, and we have a relationship with that thing. Our world may be defined by a boyfriend or a spouse, and when we lose them we lose ourselves. We may define ourselves by a religion, and we lose ourselves in that religion. We may even define ourselves by our job, and without it we go spinning for lack of purpose.
What we define as our center, as our reason for being, defines how we have relationships with the world around us. We may even not know who it is that we are, and so in every new circumstance we change like chameleons. Our life center can kill us, or it can enrich us. It can build relationships or it can destroy them. Perhaps our religion demands we eat only chocolate ice cream 364 days out of the year; we may die of happiness. Perhaps we believe there is a God, then we have a relationship with that God, and it defines how we see the world. Does the world deserve mercy or death? Am I righteous or deserving of judgement? Am I loved or hated? Are others loved or hated?
Or perhaps we believe that we were born out of spontaneous combustion, perhaps we were born from nothing; then we have a relationship with nothing. I have nothing else to say...
Whatever we are, whoever we will be, we live according to relationship. I live according to relationship. I want my relationships to be real and full. I want them to be strong and to last. I believe in a relational, personal, God and so I believe my relationships to be personal. I believe in a God who is love; and so I must be love. I want to wake up next to my man with the knowledge that we are completely committed to eachother, holding back nothing. Only with that sort of commitment and dedication can we learn to live fully with and apart of eachother. I can always grow with a relationship that always hopes, and never gives up. From our commitment came my son, and with him I will always be tied. He is, and was, apart of my body. I wake up with him loving the same heart that I felt beating inside of me, and marveling at the changes I daily see. These are the kinds of relationships I pray for, and the one's I never want to lose.