Recovery Christian Center Daily Meditation - 5/23/13 - Reevaluating Relationships

"Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other. Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people. Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:12-18

The above text goes along way to describe how we should treat our friends and personal relationship and hopefully how they should treat us. Truthfully though many of us have one sided relationships where we are the ones who are loving and providing for their needs but cannot depend on them for our needs. They're the kind of friend that only calls you when they want something, but can't answer the phone when you're in need. To be practical they're not friends they're parasites and every once in a while we need to reevaluate those kinds of relationships if just to preserve our own sanity. It is very draining to encourage those who can't ever encourage you or to in any way constantly help, listen to or be the shoulder to cry on for those who can never find the time to even call us and ask us how we're doing. Now we're not talking about a brief period in a friendship or relationship where the other person is dealing with a tragedy or trauma that is making them temporarily emotionally unavailable. This is about the relationship being in this state long term. Now the first think we do is attempt to let the person know how we feel and see if that motivates them to change and then if not then it may be time to love them from a distance. We are never relieved of our spiritual responsibility to love them, but we can love ourselves enough not to be a doormat.