The Relationship Tornado

I write off and on for a local newspaper (Pathways Christian Paper) that is published by some friends of ours. Tonight I wrote this article after praying for the last few weeks and seeing the pain of a friend and her family.

Affair: The Relationship Tornado

One of my favorite lines in a song is “I followed my heart, but it lies! It lies!” Over the last few weeks I’ve been praying for someone in our church who’s spouse had an affair. Affairs are like family tornados. They destroy everything, hurting the innocent, and leaving the landscape looking completely different.

In virtually every case, the spouse that enters into the affair doesn’t set out to destroy their family it just sort of happens. People allow a look to become a flirt, and a flirt to become a conversation, and a conversation to become a connection, that connection becomes a tangled web that is virtually impossible to break free from without destroying a family, and quite often more than one family. I’ve seen so much devastation over the years come from good people who made a choice to entertain the company of someone other than their spouse. It never ends well.

Pastor Rick Warren has a saying “the grass is greenest over the septic tank for a reason”. Sometimes, we forget that what looks good from a distance really smells pretty bad if you spend enough time lying in it. Don’t follow your heart, or giddy school boy or girl crush. Follow God and his word, our hearts will lie, he never will.