Knowing the Person

There are a lot of negatives when people think of long-distance relationships. Some of them include; You don't actually know the person, you can't feel the person, you can't spend needed time together, and the list can go on. Yet I would argue that the positives outweigh the negatives. Particularly I would argue that you actually have to learn to know the person in greater detail in a long-distance relationship. It's true, you can't spend as much time together as you would like. It's true, you can't feel, hug, kiss, or go out together. Yet you can really get to know a person well in a long-distance relationship.

A long-distance relationship relies heavily upon good communication. You learn to gain a knowledge of the person's inward self by talking constantly. You learn to gain a knowledge of the person's faith in God, goals, dreams, family, likes, dislikes, mood, and personality. Long-distance relationships, in this aspect, are super beneficial. You are forced to learn about a person, not just be taken away by the appearance of a person.

Now don't get me wrong, the beauty of my wife is a wonderful gift but the beauty of her inward character is much more wonderful. I would say it is a million times more wonderful than her outward beauty. So outward beauty is nice, but to know the person inside and out is great. This is what a long-distance relationship forces you to do. When I told close friends and relatives that I met my wife in May and we were getting married in December, I would always hear the same thing. They would say, "How are you going to marry someone you never met in person?" "You don't actually know her." "Go visit her before you make that decision." What they didn't realize is that we knew each other better than most people in close-distance relationships. We talked everyday, we learned how we reacted in certain situations. We saw each other get frustrated, stressed, happy, sad, angry, and doubt. We learned to trust God together as we started going through the government regulations to get married. We learned to plan together and be of the same mind from 8,000 miles away. We learned to voice our frustrations in loving and understanding ways. Really, we learned in those months how to devote ourselves to one another in ways that we might not have learned if we were not so far apart. I would never want that experience to change. It made us love harder, learn deeper, and trust better.

So if you are in a long-distance relationship, ignore the stereotypes. Ignore the haters that say, "You don't really know that person." Just focus on devoting yourself to one another in the sight of God. Focus on knowing one another inwardly. Also If you are in a close-distance relationship, don't get caught up only in the outward appearance. Don't fall in love with the idea of the feelings, the kissing, the hugging, the going out, but learn to know that person well. Not that those other things are all bad, but you can be so caught up in that part that you become blind to knowing, loving, and devoting yourself to the person. Proverbs 31:30 tells us, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised" You need to see past the beauty and the charm that eventually fades with age. I believe a long-distance relationship forces you to see past the beauty and the charm. How, you may ask. Well Matthew 15:18 says, "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart." And Matthew 12:24 says, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." You learn a lot by how a person speaks. In a long-distance relationship, talking daily for six months, you get to know a person pretty well. That's why I was so confident to marry the love of my life. What do you think? Give us your thoughts at lovebreaksthedistance@hotmail.com.

#Longdistance