On Relationships

Our very first lecture at Upward Bound began with these three questions:

What is the most important thing in life?

What causes the most JOY?

What causes the most PAIN?

Answer: Relationships.

How odd, I thought, that the one thing in life that brings us the most joy also brings us the most pain. Having the first ten days of Upward Bound focus on relationships was very important for me. This idea of our relationships causing the most joy and the most pain was ringing all too true for me at the time. Speaking as a friend who has felt a lot of hurt and caused a lot of hurt in the last year, but also living a life so full of love and laughter, I wanted to know how this is possible. It was something I had pondered earlier in the year when learning about forgiveness. Why is it so difficult to forgive those we love the most? It is because those are the deepest relationships that we are entwined in so tightly.

Over the next few days, we listened to lectures and discussed different aspects of relationships. Here are the things that stood out to me:

1. Man was never intended to live alone. In Genesis, God sees that Adam is alone and makes a partner for him. From the beginning of time, we were never intended to live this life on earth alone. We are to live in fellowship with one another.
2. Living life fully is a balancing act of learning how to love God, love others and love yourself.
3. You must be loyal to those you love and this loyalty is not something that can be proclaimed, it must be proven.
4. Learn to speak the truth in love. It hurts someone just as much to speak lies in love as it does to speak the truth without love.
5. Focus on living your life with God, not for God. He wants to walk with you each step of the way, not just watch you from afar.

The next weeks were full of putting this into practice. I was surrounded by new friends and also thinking of those at home. It became a very familiar challenge of trying to figure out how to foster my existing relationships while also trying to grow new ones. It is still a struggle for me, but while I was away, I did learn about simplifying and thinking about what is truly important. I don’t need another pair of shoes and I don’t need to see every musical at the 5^th Avenue this year. What I do need to do is focus on the things I have that will last: relationships with the ones I love.

All Alone

Don’t leave me alone at this time, for I’m afraid of what I will discover inside. –Mumford & Sons (Roll Away the Stone)

Just a few days before Upward Bound ended, we were hiking one day and we were led on a wild goose chase to a clearing in the forest. We all suspected by this time that we were going to be participating in the long anticipated solo night. Still, I think we all found there was no way to really prepare for this. Some had saved food from their lunches and others had packed their crochet hooks, but when we finally set out on our solo time, none of that really mattered.

When we reached the clearing in the forest before we all went our separate ways, we were told the basic purpose of the solo time. SO OFTEN, WE ARE TERRIFIED TO BE ALONE. WE MUST LEARN THE BEAUTY OF BEING AWAY FROM ALL DISTRACTIONS. I was actually looking forward to the time on my own, but others were cuddled close to their friends until the second we parted. The thing that surprised us all was that we would not be alone in the woods for 24 hours, but for 48 hours. Two days in the woods and here is what we had:

-a tarp and small rope to create a shelter

-our backpacks and whatever might be inside them

-Bible, journal and pen

I was worried about fasting, others were scared to be alone and the more logical ones were wondering about thunderstorms. So, after a short lecture on the spiritual discipline of fasting and solitude, we were led through the woods and dropped off one by one in the 20 square meters that we would be living in for the next two days.

It started off just fine for me. The sun was shining, I ate my last bit of food (an absolutely delicious apple) and I sat on a rock thinking to myself, “this is going to be great!” I built, what I considered to be, an excellent shelter that would guarantee me to stay dry. I opened my Bible and began plugging through Isaiah. As soon as the sun went down, it started to get very cold and I waited for the leaders to come fill my water bottle so that I could go to sleep. They came by and I proudly showed them my shelter and then I crawled into my little cocoon and fell asleep.

The next morning I woke to the sound of rain pouring down on my tarp. I was not wet, so the shelter had been successful, but I was very uncomfortable because I was tired of lying down and there was no way to sit up inside my shelter. So, I reached my hand out to feel how hard it was raining and decided to brave it. I put my shoes and raingear on and discovered it was not raining as hard as I thought. It was dry enough for a moment for me to create a second shelter out of an extra garbage bag I had in my pack. I tied it up in a tree and I spent a majority of the next 30 hours sitting in this spot. I constantly repeated this to myself:

Be still and know that I am God.

I was disgusted to later discover that my foot had been sharing my shoe with a slug for quite some time and was now covered in slime. Frustrated, very cold and very wet, this solo time was harder than I anticipated. But it was so good!

I went two days without eating any food. I wasn’t bored. I didn’t get lonely. I learned that I really don’t need much to survive. The only thing I desperately wanted was to be either warm or dry…it didn’t even need to be both. When it was finished and I was asked it I would do it again, I said “definitely, but only if it was sunny or I had a tent.” It really taught me not to take the basic things for granted. Things like hot drinks, a roof over my head and a mattress. It also proved to me that we really are not made to be alone. When we came back together after the time was up, we broke our fast together and it was one of the most joyful reunions I have ever experienced. We were full of love.