Renegotiating Relationships

I have come to love this phrase Negotiating Relationships. Sometime ago a guy was talking about parenting and he mentioned parenting as a negotiation. It caught my attention and lately I've expanded on it as I considered the changes in my relationship with my husband and then yesterday it expanded itself for application to all my relationships.

Yesterday was hard. Something was said and and then somethings else was said between me and a friend and we tried resolving it with emails but that didn't work so we got on the phone and that was much better. In the conversation my friend spoke of having been for a while now trying to figure out for herself what all my changing does to her relationship with me. So we talked for a little while about the renegotiating of our relationship.

Then Larry and I spent some time on the phone after that exploring that thought. This morning I woke up thinking about some relationships that have been negotiated and renegotiated in recent years. (Why do I fall in love with such big words - they are such a chore to type.) Some transitioned easily - others not so easily. When Larry and I were much younger we knew nothing of this and people were lost to us entirely. I don't like to see that happen anymore.

We have for years now talked much about holding people loosely. I think this is an enlargement of that idea. Holding people loosely can mean letting them go entirely but keeping the door to your heart open to them and if they come back in and go out then it's OK. Or even if they don't come back in at all you can still keep your heart open. Sometimes it has to be that way. But I'm liking this idea of renegotiating the relationship. It's harder sometimes I will say that for it. But it's also worth it. In my younger days I actually had little problem losing people. I could let people go easily. In these older days of mine I know that I don't want to lose people. I like the family that God has given me and I want to keep it and continue to be life-giving to all as much as I can. But in every relationship there has to be some kind of meeting place for the hearts and minds and so we might have to renegotiate where that is.

The key I think is talking about it. Talking to each other. It helps to have these words (even if they are long and unwieldy) to help us understand what is happening and what we need to do. They give us the subject for the conversations that we might need to have. And I do say conversations as a plural. It will take more than one.

And it is definitely worth the effort. You are worth the effort.