Yesterday I posted my review of Fully Alive by Ken Davis.

Davis’ book challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to build deep friendships.

Today is the first day of school for millions of children; it’s an ideal opportunity to build on old friendships or to start building new ones.

How Can I Build Friendships?

Davis explains, “Making friends is like exercise; it requires discipline and vigilance.”  1
– It takes time
– It takes patience
– It takes graciousness.

Graciousness?

In the past couple weeks I’ve found myself in several conflicts. 

Sometimes it was clearly my fault, other times it was a miscommunication, and I’ve also been attacked by others.

Whether it’s listening to someone we’ve hurt, listening to someone explain their perspective, or listening to someone we’ve been hurt by, almost everyone I know agrees that we need to become better listeners.

Here are six helpful tips that I’m learning.

6 Attitudes That Get In The Way Of Listening:

Last night my wife and I renewed our wedding vows in front of many, many friends old and new.  1

Today is the first day of our second twenty-five years and my first day with my new vows in place.

New vows?
What did I promise?
This is what I said:

Twenty-five years ago I repeated traditional vows that I hoped to keep:

I, Scott, take you Amy, to be my wife
To have and to hold
From this day forward
For better, or for worse
For richer or for poorer
In sickness and in health
To love and to cherish until we are parted by death
As God is my witness,
I give you my promise

This Christmas week was very different. For the first time since we got married we did not travel.  We had a great time the 23rd — our Christmas — but the 24th & 25th felt a little empty and lonely.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a peaceful and blessed Christmas week, it was just different than in the past.

Perilous Presents

If our family and friends depended on me knowing their interests and needs they would never get anything.  Whether I’m being frugal or I’m ignorant, I simply don’t know what people like.

I’ve sat here for a while trying to figure out to write.  I know I’m writing “my story”.

“Hello”, says my self-talk, “it’s YOUR *&^* story, how hard can it be to write about yourself?!?”  Well, it’s hard because I’m only giving myself one day to write about my wife Amy as part of “My Story”. 

Tears started…great…crying in Caribou!  [PAUSE button engaged!]

Composed and now at home, let me tell you about my best friend, Amy.

Amy is adorable, beautiful, caring, determined, efficient, forgiving, generous, heart-felt, intentional, just and kind, loving, merciful, nutty, optimistic, patient, quality, resilient, sensitive, tough, understanding, [private], well-intentioned, [private again], youthful, and zany.

Peace Is Vulnerable

If you asked me, “Are you a fear-filled person?”, I would respond no.  On the other hand there are subtle ways on a daily basis that fear sneaks into my mind, heart and soul.  This week in fact I realize that my fears arose and my personal peace was compromised when:

- When I expect Amy to be available to answer my phone calls, and she wasn’t for hours.
- When I’m driving & speeding and a police car with it’s lights on races up behind me.
- When I have to talk to someone and ask for a donation to TreeHouse.
- We had a three-hour outdoor activity planned for hundreds and the weather forecast was sixty-one degree and rainy.

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of having clear expectations in your relationships.  If you have not read it you might want to do so now.  Here it is:

It’s important to talk through expectations throughout the life of your relationship or sadly it may lead to the death of that relationship.

Below is a quick but provocative quiz listing common but unspoken expectations that affect relationships.

If you’re single and you aren’t in relationship now take it anyway.  Ask a friend to answer it for you and discuss his/her answers.  Either way, copy and paste this quiz into a document to save it for the day you want to take your next relationship to a deeper level.