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.