The other day my daughter’s ipad went black.  Everything appeared normal with it the night before as she watched it.  Sometimes in a relationship everything can seem normal and going well and suddenly it can feel like it went dark. What do you do?  I immediately thought perhaps she didn’t charge it properly all the way in the wall. Just like her ipad needed to properly be plugged in so do we in our relationships with God to properly function.  When we don’t spend quality time with God and set aside the time we need, we can end up feeling dead in our relationships.

She cried and told me she was having a hard time forgiving herself.  I knew she thought it was worse than it was and may not be repairable or it may cost too much for me to fix it right now.  So many respond the same way my daughter did when a relationship has not been properly maintained by one in the relationship and it gets dark.  You may be thinking it is too late or you just don’t believe you can fix it.

 My next reaction was to try and access the possible root causes of what she may have done to cause it.  Just like her ipad we must go back to the root causes and take an analysis of what may have caused the relationship to go dark. In our human frailty the first thing we do is just like my six-year-old did, struggle to forgive herself.  Forgive yourself and trust God that he can repair what was broken.

I didn’t get angry with her or start assuming it was all her fault.  That was growth for me. We must give our relationships grace to make mistakes and trust God to fix them. We also need to give each other grace to grow. I immediately went to google some possible solutions. My mind began to race, and I began to think of all the worse possible scenarios.  I didn’t have apple care insurance on it, nor had I purchased the insurance through T-Mobile 2 years ago when I purchased it for her.  I was thinking maybe they will have to erase everything and set it back to its original state.   

But sometimes you just need a reset.

So instead of getting stuck in my head like some of us do in our relationships and don’t fix what is broke, I decided to set up an appointment at the apple store.  I took it back to the manufacturer. God wants us to bring our relationships back to him so he can fix them when they go dark. God wants you to know it is not as bad as you thought it was. God wants you to know you don’t have to throw away the good times with the bad ones. I went to our appointment yesterday and all the technician did was reset it. We weren’t turning it off and recharging it and he said when you don’t turn it off all the way sometimes, it will eventually shut completely down.  In our relationships God wants us to know sometimes we just need to reset, recharge and simply rest and know that you are not starting from scratch when you turn it back on this time.