DON’T DELETE YET. CHECK THE PATTERN

Welcome to a brand new year, a year where God’s grace for greatness rests upon you and your vital relationships. 

At the turn of last year, I carried out a self-audit because I want to have a better year in 2015.  One part of my life that I took a critical look at was my relationships. I didn’t want to go into the New Year with less than stellar relationships.  I knew it was going to be a pretty busy year for me and I didn’t want to carry unnecessary baggage into the year.  My mantra was that if upon review I found that I had relationships that were not working I was going to deliberately delete such relationships from my life.

Thankfully, upon reviewing that spoke of my life, I didn’t really find any relationship that I needed to ‘delete’.  Instead, my eyes were open to some relationships I needed to nurture who have been in my life but have been stagnant because I had not deliberately given them my attention. I also did find a few relationships whose dynamics and patterns I had to review… Upon close review of these ones, I realised that they had not been as effective as they ought to be because the basis upon which I related with them was wrong.

Every relationship has a purpose and based on that purpose every single one has a pattern or template.  To get the best out of any relationship, whether marital or otherwise, we all need to understand that if a relationship is not conducted with the right pattern,it cannot yield the right results.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with someone who said that she was tired of her marriage and wanted to get out of it.  I suggested we should meet over a period to find out what the issue really was.  As we met and talked through her experience and dissatisfaction, it dawned on me that while her dissatisfaction was real, the root cause was not what she thought it was.  She had her marriage on the wrong foundation and pattern so it could not produce the fruits that she wanted, even if she gave it all she got.

In Psalm 11:3, the Bible asks; ‘if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?’  By the time we began to critically assess why she wasn’t getting the desired results, it was clear that it wasn’t that her husband was a bad person, nor was it that she was a bad person, it was simply a case of deploying the wrong template to the right relationship.

I have no idea what you are not getting out of your relationship but I do know that before you write it off, there might just be a need to check your patterns and your templates to ascertain if it was even configured to give the results you have expected.

This is an expectation issue and we must tackle them this early in the year to ensure that you we don’t pour ourselves into relationships that yield nothing, only to find that they didn’t yield much because our patterns and expectations were not aligned or in sync.  What do I mean?  Let us assume that we had a child sitting for an examination and we had agreed to give them every tool and support they require to ensure they get the best grades possible, part of that support I assume will be a conducive environment where they can study and prepare for said examination.

Now, imagine that every day as parents, we come home with our friends to start a party that runs till late in the night.  Therefore denying the child the serene environment to study or rest.  When the results are finally released and the child doesn’t do quite as well as we expected, can it be said that it was entirely his fault?

Relationships like computers will only spew back what is fed in.

  So if we feed our relationships garbage, automatically we should expect garbage in return.  If we deal with a caustic tongue and a deceitful heart, our patterns are already corrupted, so we should not expect anything but corruption in return.

All I am trying to say by this article is this: yes, it is the start of a new year and we will be more effective if we review our relationships and take out those that don’t add value. However, it is imperative before you ‘delete’ that relationship to check the patterns and the templates to ensure that you have put in the right stuff that can deliver on your expectations.  Otherwise, all you may be required to do is change the patterns and who knows, that may be the answer you are looking for.

Till next time when I come your way again, please consider that not everything that isn’t working is necessarily bad. It may just be a function of our patterns.

Be good to each other.

Bidemi