Relationship, Relationship, Relationship

My Adolescent Psychology professor, Dr. Grill, used the phrase 'relationship, relationship, relationship' in class one day to describe a mechanism of attempting to get your counseling client to open up to you. While I was sitting there, I remember trying to figure out what my definition of a relationship is. Here's what I came up with: a relationship is when your heart and mind are devoted to displaying immense love to another person. Fair enough? When you decide to allow your heart and mind to care about someone enough, your love for them never disappears. This love can grow stronger, or weaker, over time, but once the relationship and love have been established, it should be indefinitely. Stop and think to yourself what your definition of a relationship is. Is your definition the feeling you get when someone lets you borrow their pencil in class? Is it the feeling you get when a cute guy opens the door for you? Whether your definition is one of these or something else, there are several different explanations as to how a relationship starts, how a relationships maintains, and possibly how a relationship ends. First, I'm gonna talk about how a relationship starts when it comes to dating to find your potential spouse. This typically happens over the internet, when you're at the gym and that cute guy smiles when he catches you watching him on the treadmill, when you realize that you have something in common, or when your best friend introduces you to this guy she met from school and thinks they could hit it off. (Erin, that was for you. :) There are several variations of ways that interest in someone spreads and eventually evolves into a relationship. When the attaction is set, it's really important not to rush things. Ladies, it's ok to just be friends for a while, but it's also definitely ok to jump on your bed and blare Taylor Swift after you've just had an incredible 'date.' Boys, yes, we do do that, even if it's such a simple date like going stargazing. Not all girls want to be taken to dinner and a movie everytime you take us out, just sayin. The most common misconception with dating I thnk is that there has to be a label right away. When you're friends, everything stays so legit. Once you say the words, "will you go out with me," everything changes. Once it's 'facebook official' you're pretty much in it for the long haul. The difference between friends and going out isn't just that you can hold hands and kiss eachother and blah blah blah, it's that you've chosen to care about that person on a higher level than just going to Wal-Mart with your best friend. You've decided that that person means something to you, and qualities that they possess are potentially ones that you could see your future husband/wife having. Do you see how complicated that is? In my last post I mentioned something about a dumb head boy. Him and I were great, went to dinner, went on walks, watched sunsets, yada yada yada. But the biggest problem that I see right now looking back on it, is that we rushed certain things that didn't need to be rushed at all. We talked about marriage, when we should've just been concerned with how thankful we were for the opportunity to have found a relationship in itself. The most important thing to make sure you've established is TRUST. If you can't trust this person, don't jump into a relationship with them, it's that simple. Take it from me, it WILL cause problems throughout your entire relationship. And no one wants to fight all the time. If you do, that's weird, just sayin. Boys, make sure you're ready to deal with that girl being obsessed with Forever 21 and how she cries when she sees a dead cat. Girls, make sure you're ready to deal with how his shirt looks wrinkled when you've got a date to go to Olive Garden and how he refuses to stop wearing that grungy Chicago Cubs hat. Take baby steps, do not rush into things. Do not say yes to a boy who you can't trust, and vice versa. Right now, if you're desiring a relationship, you're all for it, the words relationship, relationship, relationship are in correlation to I want, I want, I want. But, if you rush into things, and things start to get a little rocky, you'll start to question the qualities of that person and it all becomes a big mess. Right now, my replacement words for relationship, relationship, relationship are most definitely be more cautious, take it slower, and be smart about it.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Take the name of the person you have a crush on, you're dating, you're engaged to, or whatever'd to, and in this verse put their name in the place of everytime you see the word "Love." If their name is before a sentence and then that sentence isn't true about them, then that's something that needs to be worked on about that person, and even try doing the same thing with your own name to see what you may need to be working on in that relationship. Example: Eric is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. If this sentence isn't true, talk to him about it, and talk to God about it.

God Always Manages to Take the Last Piece Of Cake, AND Eat It Too. :)

Isn't it frustrating but comforting when you realize that God really does know what He's talking about? It's kinda the same feeling as when you're at the supermarket and the cashier tells you you've short changed them. Your pride gets in the way, and your immediate reaction is to act like it isn't true. You try to think of all the ways the cashier is wrong and how there's no way possible that you're gonna let someone else tell you you're wrong. But, at the very beginning of the whole fiasco, you knew you the cashier was right, but wasting time arguing would've been "better" than admitting your fault. Isn't this the same thing we do with God? When we do something wrong, whatever it may be, God always, or should always, become our immediate thought. He's there saying, "No, that's not right. What you just did was wrong. While you're already thinking about Me and My unfathomable-ness (since we all know that that's what you consume your mind with), why don't you just go ahead and confess to Me what you just did." And then we, humans with a cute little prideful way about us, respond something like this, "No, God, that wasn't wrong at all. It was one beer. It was one answer that I looked at on that person's test. It was one elderly woman who needed help but I was late for work so I didn't help her. Just one God, just one." It's one thing for us to act dumb at the supermarket, but is it really that intelligent to try to win with the person who told the oceans they can only go so far, heck, the person who created the human thought process? Oh pick me, pick me, I know this answer! Yeah um, the answer is no. That's not an intelligent thing to do at all. I struggle with all of this myself, the whole admitting I'm wrong thing. Discipline is kind of a foreign concept to me, so my natural instinct is to assume that as long as I didn't commit murder, then it's not something that's gonna put my salvation in jeopardy. My current situation is that I need to forgive, but I'm too busy TELLING God that this boy is such a dumb head, yes, let that sink in, a dumb head, when I should bebusy ASKING God what I can do to make myself look like less of a dumb head and accept that this situation is happening within His will for my life. He's basically sitting somewhere random everywhere I go waving His arms saying, "Taylor, hello, do you want to come talk about it instead of giving her dirty looks? Would you like to take My hand and allow yourself to fall in love with ME instead of regretting that you gave your heart to this young man?" God is everywhere, just sitting, waiting. Whenever we're doing something wrong, we feel this inevitable emotion called guilt, or at least we should. According to Webster's Dictionary, guilt means this: the state of one who has committed an offense especially consciously. Hm, guilt happens when we directly notice that we did something wrong, especially consciously. Stop trying to hide from God, He realizes what you did, what you want to do, what you have done, and He still loves you anyway, isn't that incredible? God always knows what He's talking about and we always run away because there's no way someone's gonna tell us that we're wrong. Take the time to admit to God when you know you did something wrong, opposed to arguing and spending days drowning in sinful pride and keeping it bottled in. Don't short change God, for He is the decider of your salvation.

Proverbs 11:2 - "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."