Why relationships are important

So for my first official blog post I wanted to write about relationships. This post comes out of a time when I shared with some friends here about relationships and wanted to pass on what I shared. This is new territory for me since I'm used to writing stories. So, I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to write me and tell me if you liked it or hated it.

(Author's note: When I talk about relationships I don't mean boyfriend/girlfriend... I'm not in high school anymore. What I mean is your friends, family, the guy who works at the gas station or the girl who makes your coffee at Starbucks. People who are important in your life and people who are part of your routine.)

I shared a couple of main points; one of them being that time is a thief. We can never get seasons of our life back. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. And with that we never know who we’re going to impact through our life. Don’t neglect even the smallest relationship in your life, because that might be the most important relationship for making a difference.

In my life I saw this in a guy I met after living here only a month or so. He’s a Chinese guy (Brian) and we would occasionally bump into each other. Each time we would exchange hello’s and get caught up on how the other is doing. But it would have been easy for me to avoid him when I saw him or ignore his calls. Well I chose not to and as a result of building a relationship with this guy a great opportunity has opened up to me.

He (Brian) called me a few months ago to ask if I would like to tutor a girl in her English. Tutoring this girl has become a great way for me to spend my time and grow in my teaching gift as well as serving her family. I would never have envisioned myself doing this and it has been a pleasant surprise. And it came as a result of having this guy, Brian, in my life. I’m not saying that friends are only there to provide us for opportunities, I am however saying, that building relationships opens doors to do great things and grow as person.

We also don’t know what will impact people and should never neglect even the smallest area of life. But instead we should regard all of our life and all of our interactions with others as important. I recently had a Chinese friend tell me that when he was at University he had a foreign teacher who taught him English. And what my friend said is that this teacher was dedicated to his work, came to work prepared and was in general a hard worker. My friend went to him and asked why he was like this and the teacher began to share his life with my friend.

This student is a completely different person because of this teacher’s influence on his life. All because this guy was a hard worker and devoted to his students. And what I told my friends while sharing with them is that; “though we never know what will impact people, we do know we won’t impact them if we don’t share our lives.”

Lastly, I want to share a proverb from an old book that reads like this, “An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable.” When I first read this proverb I had no idea what it meant, later I read another person’s interpretation of its meaning and he said this about it, “The only way to keep your life free of people problems is to keep it free of people. But if your life is empty of people, it's useless.” Relationships are messy, they add stress to your life and make things more difficult, but they’re worth it. It’s so important for us and others that we share our lives, we are the most valuable thing we have to give to others. You can keep your life easy by not investing in relationships, but is that the point of life? Let’s get messy and get to know each other, growing, learning, and sharing in each other’s joys and difficulties.

But these are only my thoughts, what are yours?

Enjoy this day,
Matt

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