Please Don't Dispose

What do diapers, cigarette lighters, ink cartridges, plastic bags, and

glass jars have in common? The answer: They all used to be reused, but for the most part are now discarded and disposed of. That's right - there was a time when parents actually washed cloth diapers and reused them. Now our landfills are glutted with refuse that will take millenia to decompose. What does this have to do with marriage and relationships?

Westerners have gotten into the nasty habit of throwing away relationships that seem to have outlived their purpose. Rather than washing, purifying, refilling and caring for the relationship, we dispose of it when it's too much trouble or inconvenient. And these "disposable" relationships also include our primary ones like marriage and family relationships.

And there's another problem with this disposable mentality that few people discern or discuss: the quality of the product is collectively reduced to a one-time usage because society plans to discard it anyways. So we use low quality plastic instead of beautiful glass jars - we use plastic lighters instead of ornately decorated metal lighters - we use cheap plastic bags instead of decorated burlap and cloth bags. And the same thing happens to our relationships - we cheapen them because we plan to use them once and then dispose of them. We have a generation of adults who've been "used" once emotionally, physically and sexually and then discarded.

But the real value and beauty and worth is found in making something with such quality that you deeply desire to hold onto it as long as you can. That's the way we should look at marriage and family relationships - we're creating something so beautiful and glorious that the last thought on our mind is discarding (ie. divorcing, ghosting a friend,) our close relationships. My parents taught me a cute little rhyme that I've never forgotten: "Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold." Your greatest relationships are gold - please don't dispose of the gift of golden friendships.