My Way of Measuring a Relationship

A friend of mine had just entered a new relationship, and I called her to ask how it was going.  She chatted happily for a few minutes, but before long I got to ask her something.  "Is he Rob to your Laura?" I asked.  She laughed.  And laughed.  And then quieted.  She thought about it for a while, but said she would have to get back to me on that one.

Rob and Laura are television characters.  Specifically they are the husband and wife on the Dick Van Dyke Show, which my friend and I were practically obsessed with at the time of this conversation.  If you've never seen the show then you should, but for the sake of this post I'll summarize their relationship in two words: absolutely adorable.  They are quite possibly my favorite TV couple ever (which is saying something).

The more I think about it though, the more I realize that this is how I measure relationships.  I compare a real life relationship, weather it be mine or someone else's, to a fictional one.  Josh and Donna.  Angel and Buffy (or Spike and Buffy later).  Chuck and Sarah.  These people are fictional.  It is completely unfair to compare them to people who I know and care about, but I do anyway.  How can a fiction relationship -- where any nuance can be answered away in a short scene and then never mentioned again -- compare to a real relationship where brokenness and hurt feelings linger for days, weeks or even years?  The answer: it can't.  But we do it anyway.

Some people are destined for each other.  Like Ross and Rachel.  But Ross and Rachel had a team of writers behind them making sure that everything worked out perfectly.  In real life it doesn't work like that, no matter how much you believe in destiny.

What is my "destiny"?  What is your's?  I believe that we create our own destiny.  It's impossible to tell how our lives will turn out in the end.  All we can do it make the best choices we can, and trust that God will provide.  He always does.