Have you ever watched a house get built? Can you imagine what would happen should the builder forget one of the major pieces? I’d like to look at what would happen if one of those “major” pieces was forgotten.
1. The Foundation
The very beginnings of the home. The foundation provides stability and a firm starting point for the house. Without it, nothing that is built will ever be permanent. When walls are erected, they will be broken down and destroyed by any subtle shift of the ground beneath them. Eventually, without a foundation, even the best built house will collapse into a heap of rubble leaving little, if anything, behind for salvage.
2. The Framework/Walls
If you have a foundation, but you don’t build any walls, you’ll never be able to fill your house with anything. You won’t be able to build a roof to shelter you when it rains, you won’t be able to hang any pictures or do any decorating either. Anything you try to store in the house will be scattered whichever way the wind is blowing and never have any kind of permanence.
3. The Roof
If you build the foundation and the walls, you’ve got a good start, but unless you’re expecting nothing but sunny days, you’ll need a roof. There are different seasons throughout the year in most places, and sometimes it rains, sometimes it snows, and sometimes there is thunder and lightning. Without something solid to protect the walls of your house from these elements, things will get destroyed by the stormy weather outside. Eventually the storms will cause irreversible damage to the walls without a roof, causing them to get wet, to mold, and to eventually collapse in on themselves.
Those are what I see to be the major components of building a house. There is one final component however that is just as important as the other 3, but can be added at any time during the houses lifetime if you have properly built the house. The final component is the interior/exterior decorations. These are the little things that you add to the house to both enhance, and further define its beauty. Pictures on the walls, curtains for the windows, knick-knacks for the shelves, etc. None of these things help the foundation be more solid, the walls to be more stable, or the roof to be more protective, but they serve to make what is already in existence more beautiful for whomever lives in the house.
I’ve recently realized that building a successful relationship is similar to building a house. If you will indulge me, which you kinda have to since it’s my freaking blog, I would like to again, break down the major parts of the imaginary “relationship house”.
1. The Foundation
This is where the relationship house starts. Starting with the light and fluffy stuff that deepens into a strong friendship and builds a firm foundation for the rest of the relationship to be built upon. This is where the initial trust is formed, and also where the 2 people learn about the likes, dislikes, habits(both bad and good), traits, and, as the friendship grows stronger, some of the deeper things about each other. Once the foundation has been laid and is strong enough to build on, we move onto the next component.
2. The Framework/Walls
The next step once the foundation is laid is to start building the next permanent part of the relationship. The framework/walls to me represent all the permanent things that build up a relationship while it’s developing. These walls are always between just the 2 people involved in the construction, but can be sometimes affected by people outside also. I see the walls as being the discovery of who the other person really is, not just the person that everybody sees on the outside, but the person that not everybody gets to know. All the past history, neuroses, life-changing events, and the things that make that person who they are.
3. The Roof
The roof is a unique piece of the “house” in the sense that it gets built at the same time as the framework/walls. The roof serves to close the house off from the outside elements by providing shelter and protection to those underneath it. To me, the roof represents the trust and emotional intimacy that two people need in a relationship. With those two things comes the ability to weather any storm because you know that any rain, debris, or wind will be shut out by the roof. Being able to “hide” with each other underneath this roof represents the ability to talk to each other about absolutely everything that is going on, good, bad or otherwise.
Once the three permanent parts of the house/relationship are built, that brings us to the interior/exterior decorations. As before, these things don’t make the house physically stronger, but they serve to enhance the existing beauty of the relationship and make the subtle details of the relationship stand out more. These decorations to me represent memories that will be made together, significant events in the lives of the two, and other things along those lines. The walls, foundation, and roof all work together to provide a safe place for these decorations where they won’t get swept away but wind, washed away by the occasional rainstorm, or otherwise damaged by the trials that most relationships go through.
And now onto the final, and most important piece of the building process, the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the piece of the house that starts everything. It’s the focal point of what the relationship is built on. For me, this focal point is the relationship I have with Jesus Christ. I want everything I do in the relationship I’m building to follow the example that was set for me by my Savior. I want to have all the humility, all the self-sacrifrice, the absolute and unconditional acceptance of the other person as they are, and most of all, the perfect Love that He first displayed for me. I want to pour these things out on my spouse as if it was blood from my veins. I want to use the example that was set for me and be able to always place the needs of my spouse in front of my own. I want to give myself wholly and completely to this person, so that none of my selfish ambition, pride, or anything else that tells me my needs are more important than those of the other person are allowed to live. I believe that the one thing that was always demonstrated by Jesus was Love…unconditional, absolute, and perfect Love. I believe, with every fiber of my being, that if you attempt to love your other half as Jesus first loved you, that all of the stuff I touched on above will fall into place, and before you know it, from a bare patch of dirt, you’ll see the most beautiful house ever built rise up to the skies and stand forever.
