GROWING PAINS
(Thanks for the inspirational title, Riann!)

A wise friend once told me that the pillars which maintain the structure of a very loving relationship are: love, trust and honesty/communication. So reliant are relationships on these that should one go amiss, or begin to break down, the infrastructure of the union is doomed to one day collapse.

It seems like an easy enough task, doesn’t it? To be honest with one another? Trust each other? Talk as often as possible? Yes it IS easy, that is when things are going well and the potential for hurt feelings is low. But when hurt feelings DO come to pass and things aren’t going well, the very last thing we erroneous human beings want to do is be honest and talk about it. Leave it alone, we say, and that disturbing feeling may just go away – or so we hope. But how many times have we encountered a “problem” in our lives that we’re so surprised by, so unprepared for, that we push it aside and hope it’ll disappear because we don’t know how to handle it? It’s happened to me a lot.

Jesus once said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you." When we grow accustomed to living life a certain way, having things done the way we’re used to and experiencing the comfort and dependency on relationships for long periods of time, we often become very protective of such treasure; thinking, possibly hoping, that life will be this way, this good ALWAYS. But it hardly ever happens that way, does it? “There is no growth without change” a famous saying goes. It’s too bad we have to keep reminding ourselves of it, but when we remember, we’re no less than grateful that we did.