God’s Will in Relationships

Curious, she thought.

Something was wrong. It should be done already. Becky was making a dessert for a friend’s birthday. The oven was set at the right temperature and the timer was set for the right baking time but the dessert wasn’t done. She added five minutes which brought it closer to completion but it took ten more minutes before exiting the oven.

As the property manager in her building complex, she added her name to a list with two other residents who shared the problem—ovens that weren’t meeting their owner’s expectations.  Brad was her trusted service professional and she immediately scheduled him to fix the three malfunctioning ovens.

Wednesday morning Brad arrived and within minutes determined that Becky’s oven was off by 20 degrees. He recalibrated it and Becky was confident that her future culinary creations would be cooked to perfection on time.

Brad and Becky proceeded to the second residence. After a thorough diagnosis Brad determined the oven needed a new part. With care he replaced the faulty mechanism to restore it to its original high-performance specifications.

When the last malfunctioning oven was diagnosed, however, the outcome was different. This oven was beyond the help of recalibration or a new part and needed replacement.  Because of her trust in Brad, she didn’t hesitate to authorize the paperwork for a new oven.

Her duty as a property manager fulfilled that morning, she grabbed the car keys and headed out to meet friends for lunch.

It was a treat for Becky to meet with Sheila, Judy and Sandy and her only regret was their time was limited by their lunch breaks. Having the skill set of a property manager she encouraged them to select tried and true menu items so they wouldn’t run out of time to share the daily special on their life menus.

It was Sheila who spoke first and her friends sensed something weighed heavy on her heart.  She shared that a company reorganization resulted in an employee being  transferred into her department who could only be described as “toxic.”

Three weeks after the reorganization, Sheila noticed something different. She began to see the team she managed transforming—and not in a good way. After careful observation, she realized this transformation was caused by the transferred employee. It was as if toxic sewerage had seeped into her home’s basement, first unnoticed, but later detected when the odor reached the home’s first floor.

In Sheila’s department the toxic sewerage’s odor was dissension. To protect her team, company and herself she knew this employee needed to be removed; that afternoon she was taking the steps to make it happen.

Just like the third oven, was the thought that eclipsed Becky’s mind. The relationship with this employee was beyond Sheila’s help because the employee refused to comply with the company’s performance requirements. This relationship, like that oven, needed to be replaced. 

Judy was the next to speak and today’s special on her life menu was the relationship with her sister. With the passing of their mother five months ago, and now with both parents gone, there was a transition that impacted Judy and her brother and sister.

Since childhood, Judy’s relationship with her brother was amiable as they viewed the world through the same lens, but their relationship with their sister was different. Her view of the world was with a very different lens. It was as if Judy and her brother stood on one side of a chasm and their sister on the opposite side. But in this transition a bridge had to be built to cross this chasm.

Judy knew she would have to be the one to build this bridge. She realized she needed to replace broken pieces in her heart to restore a relationship with her sister and was willing to do this for the sake of family.

Just like the second oven, flashed through Becky’s mind. It took Brad to see the broken part and replace it to meet the owner’s expectations. It took Judy to recognize a broken relationship and commit herself to restore it to function in a family unit.  

The lunch table friends turned to Sandy; a mom who pretty much raised her son single handedly after a divorce. They often joked since she didn’t grow up with brothers and kids don’t come with an instruction manual. But they were free to joke because Sandy’s relationship with her son was built on a solid ground of trust and love.

A life change was approaching as her son was getting married in September. She knew she would always have his love and trust but there would be a shift as he would be building a new life and relationship with a woman who would be his wife.

She knew to release herself from her old role to step into her new role—confident that the relationship with her son would deepen and flourish.

Recalibrate, recalibrate, recalibrate repeated in Becky’s mind with the persistence of a child refusing to be ignored. Brad recalibrated her oven to generate the correct heat to produce culinary delights to nourish and celebrate friends. Sandy’s relationship with her son required the same adjustment to nourish a deepened relationship to celebrate their new roles.   

The friends didn’t want to end their time together. But the lunch crowd thinned; the decibel level of customer voices in the restaurant decreased to signal their return to afternoon commitments.

When Becky returned home and walked into her kitchen, her eyes were drawn to her oven—one of three malfunctioning ovens that reflected on her lunch break—the ending, restoration and deepening of real flesh and blood relationships. Curious, she thought.