All Relationships Have a Place in the Garden

Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.  – Erma Bombeck

Relatives are the family God picks for us and friends are the family we pick for ourselves.  God infuses people together as a family and uses their love, personalities, differences, and even dysfunction to grow our spirits and teach us how to love unconditionally.  We choose our friends because they are they share the same interests we do, encourage us, and fulfill the needs that others neglect.   Both types of family walk with us and help us find our way on our journey through life.

I thought I would share something my brother wrote about his sisters that illustrates so well how God grows our spirits and unfolds His plan for the people in our lives...

“When I was little, I wondered, what are sisters for?  They were always in the bathroom, doing God knows what, and when they finally got out of the bathroom it was impossible to get anywhere because of all the make-up and hair spray.  I use to think that sisters were put on this earth just to torture me.  I could not go five minutes without being told what to do or what to say.  As time went on I forgot the question, “What are sisters for?”  It was several years later when I realized the answer to my childhood problem.  Sisters were made by God to teach me what my parents might have forgotten to tell me; to let me know that I am special because I am myself.  My sisters taught me to smile when I was sad and to cry when I was happy.  My sisters are always there to correct my mistakes even before I make them.  There are many more answers to my question, but one stands above all others, “Who else is going to spoil me?”

I often question some relationships in my life because they can be truly exhausting or even downright heartbreaking.  But I trust in God’s plan; I trust that each and every person He planted into my life was deliberate and that if I do my part and cultivate unconditional love and forgiveness, the end result will be a harvest of understanding and enlightenment…that of all that we experience in life, love is all that matters.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”  1 Corinthians 13:1 - NIV