blogging spurt

i'm gonna take advantage of my current desire to post because i know that it'll be short-lived.  That's just the nature of my blogging.  

I'm sitting here in the Chocolate Bean in Fuquay (support local business), mooching off their free internet connection, reflecting on a conversation I just had with a good friend.  

The gist of the portion i'm reflecting on: broken relationships suck.  

I've been involved in the lives of two young men @ Grace, and both of them are suffering from broken relationships - both are victims of fathers who abruptly left.  As providence would have it, this is something i can identify with.  I don't know how much my brother has intentionally thought about the effects of our father's foolishness on our family and individuality, but i know that i've wrestled with the fatherlessness issue for the past 8+ years.  Sometimes i'm wrestling wiht it pretty intentionally, sometimes i feel like i'm being choked out, but i haven't tapped yet.  I'm willing to continue to fight for a restored relationship, and it seems like that may actually be on the horizon.  

for these young men, though, it's not even the picture.  one young man will never have it as an option on earth, but he can cling to a very important Hope.  the other can still cling to a kind of hope that is more temporal, but his father is thoroughly delinquent.  Suffering with them through this last year has given me a lot on which to reflect (hey... i should do a new years' type post)

but back to my recent conversation in the aforementioned Chocolate Bean.  I have been able to reflect on this friend's suffering in a particular broken relationship because, yet again, i can identify with the kind of brokenness.  Break-ups are largely messy, painful, awkward, confusing, and entirely too common.  On Grey's freakin' Anatomy, the breakups are frequent and frequently smoothed over with casual sex - what a ridiculously INaccurate perspective we are feeding ourselves.  I can't hate a show that plays a Derek Webb song to intro, however, so i won't say anything else negative about Grey's.  i just won't watch it with my wife if i can help it.  

his particular breakup has caused the significant other to be significantly bitter and spiteful.  Of course, i only got one side of the narrative here in the Chocolate Bean, but i trust that God has given me a discernment for some things, this being one of them.  I was once the bitter recipient of a breakup talk, but i was not spiteful... and ultimately bitterness takes a strong root and ruins a lot of other relationships if it is not quickly dealt with.. nipped in the bud, as it were... 

I hope that should any of my friendships, or even my marriage, suffer from brokenness that God will use the community of faith of which i am a part to counsel me, console me, and rebuke me as necessary.  

GOD IS NOT PLEASED with BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS.  

do whatever you can to bring healing and wholeness to any relationship of which you are a part.  

even if YOU were the one HURT.  

even if YOU did the hurting.  

please God with your thoughts, words, and actions that lead to wholeness and reconciliation.  we have all been given the ministry of reconciliation, after all