Building Blocks

Humor In Chaos

Searching for Joy Series

The Building Blocks of Relationships

I don’t remember meeting my life-long best friend. She does. She says that when we were both four years old and I was moving into my new house, that I went walking towards her place where she was outside playing in the yard. She said hello, and I ran back home. That was the start of our friendship. Fifty years strong. The greatest love story in my life besides Christ.

Except for marriage, relationships are unspoken, unwritten contracts. Friendship contracts are formed through interactions between two people who have some sort of shared interests, and those shared interests grow into agreements about how we will treat other in word and deed. If someone breaks that contract, either the contract is reinstated, a new one is secretly renegotiated, or the contract is terminated.

The parent-child contract is an automatic the moment the child is conceived. The child is thrust into this agreement with no voice on the matter. The parent has all the control. As the child grows, the contract gets re-negotiated over and over and over again as the child gains voice in the relationship. Contract re-negotiations can be exhausting as they grow.

Strangers on a plane form a short-term contract through body language. You stay in your seat, and I will stay in mine. When one passenger breaks the contract by removing their shoes and propping their stinky feet on the folding table in front of them, the rest of the passengers will give each other a side-eye of silent protest thus initiating a sort of pact of shared disgust that creates a temporary contract of nasal endurance until the end of the flight. If the situation is dire, the side-eye contracts can become pacts of understanding that physical altercations are about to commence.

Congregant/priest, student/teacher, coach/player, soldiers in the fox hole, these are all normally unwritten, unspoken relationship contracts, with socially understood rules of conduct.

That is not the same with marriage. Marriage is a written contract. It is by standard, modern law; and, it is so stated in the Bible. Even in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, to divorce a wife, a bill of divorce needs to be written up, and it can only happen under specific circumstances. Those specific circumstances are kind of confusing because in Leviticus adultery falls under capitol punishment. Nonetheless, divorce is complicated in the Old Testament because it is breaking a sacred contract, aka a Covenant.

In the New Testament, Jesus specifically states that divorce was not in the original plans for us humans. Marriage was intended for life. He states that divorce is allowed due to the hardness of our hearts. Our own fault.

In both the Old and New Testaments, marriage is seen as sacred taking the contract to the level of a covenant never intended to be broken. Us mortals here on earth tend to not treat marriage as sacred enough to be covenant. Sacredness is a high standard.

Is it too high? If one couple made it all the way to “until death us do part,” then, no, I don’t think it is too high a standard. We fail because of our own weaknesses. The issue is not with the biblical concept. Just like we can strengthen our bodies, we can strengthen our resolve, our integrity, our capability to be honest, and our capability to say no. Besides, Jesus gave us the standard by dying on the Cross for His bride, us.

How do we build safeguards against failed marriages? There are many lessons and tools available. All of them require the two people in the marriage to practice intentionality and learn the tools. All the tools fall under the category of emotional intelligence, which can be grown and nurtured. Maturity does not come by time alone.

One of the best lessons I learned from my life coach was the concept of bricks in relationships. Relationships, like buildings, are built brick by brick.

The theory is we build a brick in every interaction we have. With our spouse, our child, our parent, our friend, our sibling, the stranger on the plane, the neighbor down the street. Each interaction creates a brick. Large bricks and small bricks.

Together, we decide what to do with that brick. We have three options: place it into the foundation of our relationship making it stronger; place it into a boundary line to make our interactions respectful, loving, and healthier; or shove it into a wall built between us to protect with the potential to destroy.

We all have these bricks between husbands and wives, and in between all of us in every other relationship that builds walls between us. When we have negative interactions between us, we add bricks to the wall. When we have positive interactions, we take bricks down. We each have a wall in front of us that has a façade of how we want that person to see; a façade that protects the real us from the hurt that happens when we do not feel accepted and loved. It takes five times the number of positive interactions to remove a brick as it does for one negative interaction to put one brick up. These walls can get massive.

When this brick wall idea was explained to me, I could see the wall. In fact, I could see the walls my entire family had around each of us individually after everything we had all been through. None of us had any trust left.

The goal in repairing these relationships and healing to occur is to create safe places for exposure of our real selves. But, it isn’t safe to just take bricks down. There is a reason why bricks are put up in the first place. Safety. We are not born with these walls. They are built over time from various hurts from various relationship contracts being broken, vulnerabilities not treated with the respect they deserve, no unconditional love.

I created a goal to make my home a safe place to remove bricks from walls and place them elsewhere. I have made progress on this goal, but there is much more to do. That’s okay, because it is not a job for one. It is a job for all. Working towards a safe emotional environment is a healing journey. Understanding that we can consciously decide if this brick we just made in this moment will be part of a wall, a boundary, or a foundation is empowering when we work together. And we get to decide together if these bricks are building a shed type of relationship, a house, or a temple.

In my wedding, the second reading was from Matthew 7 on the foolish builder who built his house on sand versus the wise builder who built his house on stone. I could see that for years we were putting our bricks into our walls. We started off wise, but we became blind and foolish over time. We didn’t maintain and grow our foundation. It started off as a rock foundation. It crumbled over time from neglect and became loose sand. Nothing stands for long on loose sand.

And, we didn’t grow and maintain our boundaries.

Boundaries are not about keeping people out. Boundaries are for the individual to define their needs and wants, and give opportunities for the other to show honor and acceptance leading to healthy environments. Walls build up when boundaries are neglected.

Boundaries are rules we set for ourselves, not for our partners or other relationships, on how we will interact with the world and others around us. For example, we can set boundaries for ourselves in how we will handle conflict in our relationships in ways that are strong in message, calm in emotion, and gentle in delivery while still getting the message across. Another boundary for me was to learn to say no to things and stop being a people pleaser. Boundaries are tools to foster mutual respect when respectfully articulated and lovingly received.

Foundations are our spiritual walks that we take both alone and with each other. Foundations are meant for us and for our relationships, not one or the other. They can be prayer life, learning and growing in communication skills, personal growth, respect for each other, and a myriad of other ways that lead to stronger personal ties and more love for us and others.

Once I understood all of that, I set about putting bricks to use in my home with my children and friends. It was wonderful! Relationships were strengthened, trust got better, and new people came into my life. The level of joy in my life skyrocketed!

And yet, my husband still wanted nothing to do with me. And the kids were not making much headway with him either. I was missing a critical element.

I was watching my grandkids play with some blocks one day, and a question popped into my head. Where do these blocks come from? How are they made? What are the ingredients? I kept these questions in the front of my mind while I was doing my bible studies. I found it in Exodus.

In Exodus 5, Moses and Aaron have started the task of communicating to Pharaoh that God wants His people freed. Pharaoh did not want to hear it. Instead, he ordered that no more straw was to be provided for the Hebrews to make their daily order of bricks; and yet, the daily quota was required.

How were they supposed to make bricks without the necessary ingredients? If they did make bricks without the straw, how were the bricks going to be useful in building? Bricks without straw crumble.

It hit me! In the interactions with my husband and my kids with their father, we were not being generous with the necessary ingredients to make bricks. I explained bricks to my kids and recommended to them that they try to be generous with the ingredients and try to show their father by example how to place those bricks into building foundations and boundaries instead of walls.

We all tried with each other and with him. Between us, things got even better. With my ex, not so much. Sometimes, people don’t want to accept the ingredients. They want to do things their own way.

Just as it happened with Pharaoh, sometimes people’s hearts are hardened. Sometimes, our own hearts are hardened. That’s when I knew I had done all I could, and it was time to let go.

The best thing I can do is keep brick supplies on hand so when people come around me, they have the ingredients they need to build foundations and boundaries; and hopefully, keep the walls low.

What are those brick ingredients? Seeing Christ in each of them so love can flourish. That is done with intentionality, gentleness, wisdom, continued growth, patience, and compassion. And a dash of vulnerability. All of those together are found in intentionality and integrity.

When I keep the idea of bricks and consciously decide where I am placing them in the forefront of my mind, things tend to go better. When I forget, foundations crumble. Construction is a complicated endeavor.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more!

Sarah

Humor In Chaos

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