Broken Relationships

Being broken.  That's was the youth group I volunteer with talked about last week.  We asked students to share ways in which they are broken.  Broken body.  Broken spirit.  Broken relationships.  I began to look inward.  At the ways in which I'm broken.  So to get the ball rolling, I shared:

In college I had a best friend who was also a roommate for two years.  I had and have trouble trusting, and let her in.  There were three of us, the three musketeers.  We did a lot together.  In our senior year this friend started dating an older man.  At first, it was great.  She really liked the guy, and he seemed like a gem.

Long story short, the situation changed, and though I lived across the hall from her I went months without seeing here.  How that worked I still have no idea.

Months went by and we got in contact again.  Apologies were given, things were better.  She got engaged, I was asked to help plan the wedding and to be a bridesmaid.  Two days later, I was no longer in the wedding, planning the wedding, invited to the wedding, or being spoken to.  That day, the day she took back the offering was the one year anniversary of a personal loss.  I was emotional and needed a day.

This man, her fiancee, changed.  Changed himself, changed her, changed the relationship.  While I haven't seen him, or spoken to her in almost a year, I learn things from mutual friends.  It seems to me, an outsider, that something is off, and I am concerned.

But our friendship is broken.  Seemingly beyond repair.  What was, what am, I supposed to do?  I am a people pleaser, who finds it incredibly hard to stand my ground.  But on this, on this I am firm.  There are other things that happened that I feel warrant these emotions.  That warrant my desire of a sincere apology.  But, we will never have the same friendship we once had.

When you feel broken, broken beyond repair, broken to the core of a relationship, what do you do?  That I don't know.  That is something I am still learning.  But it is those moments that I remember that the healthy don't need a doctor.  It is the sick (Matt 9:12).  It is not the whole, perfect being who needs God, or faith or a higher power.  It is the broken.  So in these moments I pray for guidance, for peace, for an understanding, for the wisdom to know what to do next.

Because broken relationships cannot always be mended.  But if we are broken, we can be fixed.  We can be put back together.

Remember to live the best you can.  Love the most you can.  Tell the people that you love, you love them.  Take a break and soak up the sun.  

 Moments are precious, many things can wait... The Sunset Won't.