Focus on healthy relationships

I penned off last week by stating a very important statement and asking very pertinent questions that need to be honestly answered, and these were: A healthy relationship is one where moments of victory for one can be fully enjoyed by the other — without any feeling of strife! Do you have such relationships? Do you experience them?

Healthy relationships are important to one’s total being. In such a relationship, there is love, affection, honour and respect between the people. In a healthy relationship, you experience 100 percent health and bountiful wellbeing (no stress!), and the fruit of the Spirit abounds. Galatians 5:22-23 states that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now this is a powerful statement!

And I have also come to realise that your identity shapes the type of relationship you will have. The dictionary describes ‘identity’ as the condition or fact of being a specific person or thing, individuality. The word also has the meaning of being the same as. My husband is a twin and even though they were not identical, you will agree with me that when twins look alike (in other words, they are the same as), we describe them as identical.

Have you ever heard the term ‘identity crisis’? Often occurring in adolescence, but not limited to that age group, a person in such a state is uncertain of who she or he is, and where they are going in life. And what comes out of this uncertainty affects anything that they do.

Where am I going with this, you may ask?

Living from a distorted or damaged identity results in any number of issues ranging from unrealised potential to relational breakdown.   Unfortunately, the depth of this crisis is never really realised, yet alone acknowledged thus affecting the very root of relationships, resulting in not tasting the fruit of a healthy relationship!   Let’s read on more next week on identity and relationship!. n