Since Aug 04

Dear Friends,

Do you have a ‘First Aid for Relationships’ box in your house? This one was offered at a recent wedding. It contained the following:

A tape measure: to measure the space between you. Does absence make the heart grow fonder, or is ‘out of sight, out of mind’ truer for you? It will help to measure out trust and acceptance, allow room to grow yet closeness to support, unique for any relationship.

A ball of string: to hold important things together and stop things falling apart. Yet it can get in a fearful muddle when used in a rush, or from the beginning instead of the end, or pulled at too harshly – and the harder you tug, the tighter the knots get; so remember to sit down together to gently untangle the misunderstandings, the muddles, the tension.

A back pack: every relationship has one of these; it carries all the stuff that you’ve gathered over the years, hurts and heartaches, disappointments and disillusionment. All that is unresolved can weigh you down and make it hard to travel lightly together. In the back pack is a stethoscope – to listen to each other’s hearts,

and resolve the burden of fear that makes loving difficult.

Sunglasses: to keep you from being dazzled by all sorts of temptations in the world, which come along when you least expect them, and put you at risk of being blinded by something that can be both dangerous and destructive.

Two sticks and a piece of string: to mark out the necessary boundaries, like white lines in football, speed limits, or time spent on the computer. It will help you work out how far is too far, and what happens when those boundaries are broken!

A salt & pepper set: every relationship needs some salt – a small amount for flavour, and large pinch for humour, as well as a sprinkle of pepper to spice things up again

Finally, a box full of ‘sorrys’: sorry - the most difficult word in English – in any language, pride being what it is, emptying the human heart of the grace to say sorry. But where can you buy that? It comes as a free gift from God; the price paid by Jesus’ death on the Cross, to show us the way of forgiveness, when we have none in our heart to offer; the gift of love, which never ends.

The wedding season is over for another year, but married or not, I offer a box full of ‘First Aid for Relationships’- a vital gift in any household.

Blessings,

Vickie the Rector.