Lasting Relationships

At our rehearsal dinner, my matron-of-honor and college roommate, Emily, gave a speech that detailed the 10 things Andy needed to know about me before he lived with me.  Her speech was hilarious, and she had the room in stiches with laughter, but I have to throw her under the bus and say it was unoriginal – I gave the same type of speech at her rehearsal dinner over six years ago.

In fact, I still remember parts of my speech.  I spoke about how her husband would need to have the super power to help her find her car keys because, even though we had a system in place to hang them by the door, she inevitably lost them every morning and was frantically searching before running out the door to student teaching.  I told him to invest in some ear plugs unless he could handle her Christian music blaring at 6:00 am – she needed it to start her day with a positive attitude.  I told him that even though she was half blind without her contacts, she had ears that could hear a pin drop, and she had no patience for disruptive noises when it was bedtime.  It was a great speech, but my payback was equally as great because even after six years of living apart, Emily was completely on target with her advice to Andy.  She told him never to wake me up in the mornings before I was ready or he would pay the price.  She told him that even though I was little, I could make a lot of noise around the house – so don’t expect quiet after I did wake up.  She told him to be careful about asking me whether a particular shirt looks good on him because I was honest to a fault.  The entire time she spoke, our other roommate, Ashley, laughed and nodded knowingly to the comments – the same as she did when I gave the speech at Emily’s wedding. 

I lived with Emily for four years and Ashley for five (if you count living down the hall from each other in the dorm for a year).  I had another roommate for one year and one for two, but there is something about Emily and Ashley that make them extra special.  We didn’t just live together – we were best friends.  But we didn’t become that way over night.  In fact, our sophomore year we decided to live in an apartment together, and Ashley, even though she signed the lease, had almost zero interest in actually living with us, and she kept hoping her dorm roommate would change her mind and stay at ECU, so she could offer to live with her instead.  But somehow, over time, we came to the point where, in some ways, we knew each other much better than our husbands did the day before marriage.  We knew each other inside and out – quirks, insecurities, little daily habits, embarrassing secrets. Ours is a relationship that was built over time in lots of little ways that add up to a bond as close as sisters.  And God fortunately provided three other ladies, Rebecca, Sara, and Marianne, to share this type of intimate friendship built on long years of little things.

I reference these relationships because they, along with one friendship from high school, are my dearest most favorite friendships, but the reality is these relationships weren’t built in a day.  I honestly can’t point to an exact point where we went from friends to “sisters.”  Of course, I can share events that molded us – living together, Bible Studies, mission trips, spring breaks, movie nights, double dates – but don’t know when I went from liking each of them to loving them, or enjoying their company to not knowing how I could live without them. 

Our relationship became as special as it is to me only after several years of doing life together – and doing life included good times and bad, fights and tears, misunderstandings and hurt feelings, celebrations and excitement, comfort and love. In the course of less than two months of marriage, Andy and I have encountered all of those same experiences we seek to do life together.  Admittedly, I’m adjusting to the new life of what it means to be married, and the knowledge that a good marriage, like good friendship, is not achieved overnight.  Andy and I may have known each other well enough to get married, but I’m realizing that knowing and loving each other well enough to stay married for fifty plus years, like all good things, is achieved with time and through the little things.  I think part of having a good marriage – like having best friends – is knowing the small things.  It is knowing where in the house I can find him one last pair of clean socks because I haven’t done laundry, and he can’t find any in his drawer.  It is knowing how much food I need to buy in one trip so I only have to go to the grocery store once in a week.  It is him knowing that the best way to spoil me is to do the dishes after dinner, and me knowing when what he needs most is some quiet time to do some reading.  It is realizing that sharing a tube of toothpaste is, perhaps, one of the worst ideas for our relationship – and buying two tubes as a result!  And all of those things, for me, have been learned after I became “Mrs. Speight” and not before, just as I learned about a million things about Emily and Ashley that I would have never known (or not known as quickly) had I not lived with them – had I not attempted to be their roommate and their friend.

I couldn’t help but draw the parallels to the Christian life.  I think there is a fair amount of pressure on individuals to do a 180 degree turn in their lives when they become Christians.  There is some kind of belief that people become Christians, and instantly they have a totally different life.  I’m not sure I believe that completely.  Yes, I believe there are people that Jesus changes powerfully and quickly when they come to know him.  I definitely believe that.  However, I don’t know if there is enough value placed on knowing deeply because you’ve known long. 

I think that becoming a Christian might be a little like getting married.  Here is this person you’ve met and you like and you know well enough to make a commitment to him.  After all, people don’t come to know Jesus if they don’t know something about him.  The Bible itself says, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).  How can an individual believe and confess if she doesn’t know about him?  She must at least know that he is the son of God who died for her sins and was raised from the dead so she could live and have communion with God – she must at least know about the core of who he is.  She is making a life commitment and no one does that without knowing to whom they are committing.  Similarly, I knew Andy before I married him.  I knew his religious beliefs and convictions, I knew his career goals and dreams, I knew what he expected out of family life and the type of lifestyle he wanted to live.  I knew him just like I knew and liked Ashley and Emily before we moved in together.  However, in doing life with Andy – just as I did life with my college roommates – I have come to see him at an entirely different level, and these small insights give me excitement about what our relationship will look like if God blesses us with decades together.  If we threw in the towel now, or a year from now, we would continue to do life and just be people who were once married, and I wouldn’t know where to find his socks or how he likes to spend a rainy Saturday or what type of food to buy for his kitchen. 

I guess I think the same thing is true of a relationship with Jesus.  We can meet him and commit to him, but if we don’t do life with him, we never really know him.  I know there is a fair amount of debate in the Christian community about whether or not it is possible to lose salvation, and I don’t want to comment on that debate right now.  I simply want to say that it would be devastatingly sad if we made a choice to follow Christ and then stopped doing life with him.  We’d cheat ourselves from knowing what he was really about – how he spoke, how he answers prayers, what he plans for our lives.  And I’d also like to say that I don’t think an intimate relationship with Jesus comes overnight for most people.  I think it is built on long years of intentionally making time for him and doing life with him.  It comes from meeting him for coffee and prayer in the mornings and whispering thankfulness to him at night.  It comes from seeking to hear his voice while running the copy maker at work and watching and waiting for him to answer prayers that have been prayed for months on end. 

One of the best things the Lord ever said to me when I questioned whether something I’d heard was from him or myself was, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).  I felt like he was telling me that if I was really following him, I wouldn’t have to question whether I was hearing his voice – I’d know and I’d be able to follow out of the confidence of knowing.  As I continue to read The Circle Maker (and also a book by Kay Warren called Choose Joy), I’m challenged.  I realize that my prayer life isn’t want I want it to be, and I don’t trust God as I should.  But as I look at my marriage and my closest friendships, I realize that true relationship isn’t built in a day, and the longer and more effort that is put into a relationship, the more deeply I can know and the better I can love.  So, as I put time and commitment into my relationship with Christ – as I trust him with my heartbreaks and tears, as I praise him with my joys and successes, and I follow his voice to the places I know he has led – I will know him more intimately; I will trust him more, praise him bigger, and follow him harder.  And I can’t wait to see what our relationship looks like at 50 years!