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Not only is it unbelievably humbling to know that I have friends who care about me and are willing to support me–or sternly warn me when I need it–it’s amazingly freeing to be able to collaborate with them. Having someone there to talk to or to speak into my life is super-important, but having people I care about be on my team to collaborate in life is what I get most of my relationships people.

I first recognized this when I was in seminary. We broke up into groups and were strategizing about various elements that make up a church service. For those of you that don’t know my story, I was an atheist that had never attended church for the first 37 years of my life. Once I gave my life to Christ just before my 38th birthday, I enrolled in a seminary 4 months later and started serving in ministry. So, my understanding of the church or the Bible was ridiculously small as I entered seminary. Anyway, we’re sitting around talking about Sunday morning worship, and the dialog was all about music. I stopped everyone and asked this simple question: When people in ministry talk about worship, is it always in the context of music? First, everyone looked at me dumbfounded that I had asked that and it made me feel like an idiot. Then, someone in our group verbalized that I had not been involved in the church or ministry prior to being at seminary, but that it was an interesting question since people in the church tend to take things for granted. Maybe the church should think outside of the box and ask how their ministry is relating to people that have no church background. In hindsight, I appreciated the fact that I could change the course of thought for a moment to get people out of their comfort zone, but initially I got overwhelmed, felt really small, and talked to the dean that afternoon about quitting. I jut felt so out of place and so unequipped to study with people that were so far ahead of me it seemed like it would take me several lifetimes just to catch up.

One of the people in that discussion was David Meysembourg. We met that first day of seminary 6 years and even though he lives in Ohio and I live in Oregon, we have stayed connected. David has so much wisdom and experience and such a love for others that he still intimidates today just like he did back on that first day of seminary. However, rather than look down upon or take me under his wing and try to educate me, he came alongside me and encouraged me. He trusted that God was working in me and that God had equipped me to go where his vision was leading me. He thanked me for my enthusiasm and my willingness to hang in there. He committed to be by my side from that first day. He has been everything and more to me! He was there for me the day I didn’t even know where to find the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible, and he’s there for me today. We have shared a bunch of our junk (mostly me sharing my junk with him), but our friendship is much more than that. We talk about where we are at in ministry, what the future looks like, how things are with our families. We don’t seek to answer each other problems, we talk through what it looks like to go through our issues together. David deserves to be held in high regard as one who has much more wisdom and experience and is better-equipped in many ways to lead people than I am. However, he always makes me feel like he sees us on the same level and never looks at me for what I accomplish or how I fail. Although distance separates us, it is as if we are together…working together.

When I think about all that Christ has suffered on my behalf I know that I come before him everyday not deserving his sacrifice. I will celebrate that sacrifice together with others this coming Sunday on Easter. However, I also recognize that I don’t deserve people in my life such as David Meysembourg, yet he is there for me, ready to stand at my side and dig in with me. While I know I can love others because Christ first loved me, I can do it much more effectively because of my first hand experience of watching Christ live in my friend David.

I was reminded this morning as I reflected on my top 5 strengths (Based on the Clifton Strengthsfinder profile you can read about here) of how important meaningful friendships are in my life. My number 2 strength is Relator and here is how Clifton describes it:

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people—in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends—but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk—you might be taken advantage of—but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

I am exactly as this description states for Relators. I want to understand others feelings, goals, fears, dreams and I want them to understand mine. I don’t necessarily seek approval from friends and they won’t always agree with me anyway, but I definitely want them to understand me and especially understand my intentions. I think it’s one of the reasons why I’ve learned to over-communicate things. In addition, I do deliberately encourage deepening relationships with people. It reminds me of a re-connection I made this week with a lost friend named Tina Andrews.

Tina is one of those people that is always so vibrant and enthusiastic when she speaks. Her tone of voice just makes me stand at attention and hinge on every word as I know there is always something I can take away in her words aside from intended response. She’s one of those people that I happened to meet by chance with the idea of doing business together, yet once I realized who she was and what she had accomplished I started asking myself what the heck she would do continuing a relationship with me outside of business. She always had time for my calls and email and even to connect for lunch. You see, Tina and I operate in different worlds. We are uniquely different, yet I think we both share traits within the aspect of being Relators. We lost touch for years, yet at the right time we were re-connected and seemed to pick up where we left off.

Ultimately, one of my goals in business was always to do business with those people I cared for and who respected and appreciated me for more than what I could do for their bottom line. I have been graced with the ability to say that I have several people like Tina Andrews that have proven to be friend first, client a distant second place. I missed her and I miss having more friends like her in my life. Unfortunately, not everyone is open to such relationships and sometimes their junk (or mine) gets in the way. For me it’s not to consider what could have been, but to realize that there appointed times and people that I will be able to foster relationships with and that I can expect everyone to be receptive to my nature as a Relator. Today, I am thankful for people in my life like Tina that didn’t give up on me and took the one extra step required to have us connected once again.