Do you ever feel so overwhelmed by life tasks that you do not know how you will make it to the end of the week? When that happens to me, in the words of John Lennon, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
Relationships are beautiful gifts from God. He orchestrates relationships as a space of understanding and connection. Through them, we have the opportunity to understand ourselves and others. We have the opportunity to understand concepts like grace, mercy, need, and comfort. The Bible communicates in many different ways that God created humans as relational beings for connection with each other, and ultimately with Him.
I engage in many conversations with clients about their relationships: what’s working, what’s not, and how these connections impact their overall well-being. When our relationships are settled, we feel grounded and able to take on the stress of the world. When our relationships are dysfunctional, our individual emotional and mental tolerance for day-to-day tasks decreases. Relationships impact our overall ability to show up in our lives. It simply makes sense that when our relationships seem off, we feel the impact. Connection is part of our design.
We all have blueprints that guide the way we choose friends and what we expect out of relationships with them. We learn these from our early relationships with our caregivers and they continue to guide our relationships as we age. Much more can be said about these blueprints, and I love talking to people about them for relationships. For now, I’ve outlined simple principles from a favorite Bible story that can get you thinking about your own blueprints for connection. These are my observations and wonderings about what happened in the background of this exchange in Mark 2:1-12. I encourage you to look up the passage and read along.
Relationship Blueprint Principles from Mark 2:1-12
To summarize the beginning: we see four men bringing their paralytic friend before Jesus so that Jesus could heal him. In order to bring this friend, these four men chose to show up for their friend in many ways.
- They created an opportunity to hear this paralytic man’s struggle. Information had to be exchanged between this paralytic man and these four friends. Some form of communication had to take place.
- They took this friend’s struggle/need seriously. They were present with him and his struggle and let it impact their lives.
- They felt hope for something to change in his life.
- They took action to lower him through a roof. His friends gave of themselves–energy, time, strength.
- They brought him before Jesus. They recognized where their power to help ended and where they needed help from someone with greater power. They recognized their limitations and did not force unrealistic expectations on their friend with a struggle, nor on their abilities to help.
These are basic observations with rich principles about showing up for people in relationships. I do not want to overlook the fact that most of us can point to many relationships where these principles do not exist. If looking at these principles stirs anything inside of you, or if you want to slow down and look at how relationships in your life are helping or hurting you, schedule a session and we can discuss this more.
Written by Samantha Mathews, MA, APC, NCC, CMHC
Woodstock location
samantha@restorationcounselingatl.com
Samantha Matthews works with individuals of all ages. She wants to help create space and language for what you may be going through in life. Samantha sees individuals dealing with ADHD, anxiety, depression, gender issues, grief, postpartum depression, and trauma. She also does premarital and marital counseling.