Have you ever had that feeling, Friend? When friends feel more like family, and family morphs – hopping onto the bandwagon with your foes? Does family every feel like the enemy you need to love as Jesus Christ loved you?

Maybe the issue is: Rose-colored glasses. It’d be better if they were rose-colored goggles, because goggles strap on and are harder for the storms of life to dislodge.

Once that rosy glow is off any relation – friend or family member – it’s never the same. After the glow of rose is gone, relationships can be either 1) one-dimensional and forgettable; or, 2) better. How?

Well, if the storms of life break the shell of a relationship, it’s like an egg: If you crack it right, you can make something beautiful out of it – separate the yolk from the white and make a lovely, fluffy whip for waffles or who knows..? You can keep the yolk and use it, too. My point is, You can make something better than the unfertilized egg it was. Or… The shell can break…along with the yolk… Maybe bits of shell get in there, too, and after you try to get the shards out, you realize it needs to go down the disposal.

I don’t know how good I am at analogies or how well you were following that one, but I’m talking about what happens when you hit those high hurdles in a relationship. I’m talking about what happens when you or your friend or family member doesn’t clear the hurdle, and things crash. I hold to advice I got when I was younger: If the relationship means anything to you, confront the issues head on. If not, let it go.

Let it go? It, if you’re wondering, could be the issue. It could mean that you let the relationship (as you knew it) go. 👈🏾 In my experience that happens most of the time. Because people don’t have the nerve to do the confrontation thing. Confrontation feels scary or mean or…confrontational. But don’t we usually address things that mean a lot to us? If we don’t feel well, don’t we talk to a doctor (or someone) about it? If our kids come home complaining about a bully, don’t we call or get a message to someone? Those instances are examples of confrontations. And they’re healthy responses to data that comes in, to circumstances of which we’re made aware.

Why don’t we talk about it when relationships go off the rails? Why do we think we can brush that stuff under the rug?

Real friendships can sustain blows…because those friends can handle the hard work of facing issues and challenges that come up with honesty and grace. As I said earlier, relationships can be better for having weathered the storm! On the other hand, friendships or family ties that sink when they hit the inevitable icebergs of life throw off your rose-colored glasses. And those connections either wither in the eyes of your heart, becoming 1) enemies; or 2) dutiful relationships that continue to move only because of the property called inertia. When inertia is the engine of a relationship, it just means: Whatever honest spark once brought life and set a growing connection into motion is no longer actively burning; the relationship is simply moving because it hasn’t hit enough emotional debris to stop its motion outright.

That’s sad.

Whether it’s family or friendship or your marriage partnership, you never want to be moving forward purely based upon inertia – like the words of satellite broadcasts that resound out in space today, but were spoken in the past by people that are long gone. Growth in relationships doesn’t come from the memory of love and respect and humor and thoughtfulness and investment that was once a burning flame. We need to be facing our realities, changing out minds about how to be in relationships, and realize that living from love is a million quadrillion times better than existing together because of duty.

Friendship means facing it. Together.