Long Distance Relationships

What is our responsibility?

1/17/2002

Can you help with any thoughts?

My sister, as you know lives out west. We have had some contact with them off and on. I have offered them some things throughout the past two years. Before moving, I was frequently in touch via email and the phone. We built on being family mostly, and partly because she was the only physical member that has confessed a faith in Jesus.

I have since been asking this question: What is my responsibility for her? How can I be faithful to her when she lives so far away? How are you faithful to those that are a great distance away? It surely doesn’t look like it does with those locally, so how does that look, practically?

Love,

Hi. Here are some thoughts for you on the subject...

NO “pen pals” stuff. That is rubbish. NO “best friend,” or “You’re the only one who understands me” nonsense, either from you or allowed towards you. That is hideous. SO, what does that leave? You respond to her at a careful pace (as opposed to “every day” or anything that would leave her “disappointed” or “uncomfortable” if you were unable to answer for awhile for any particular reason, including discernment that you should not respond for awhile). And, respond to her based on REAL THINGS GOING ON, not sentiment, or expectation, or flesh and blood. If there is nothing going on (she is not reaching out to anyone, she is not being faithful to risk or to challenge her situations with “church” or family situations, or encountering any real situations with her children or spouse), then there is NOTHING to talk about! She is grieving the Spirit, and therefore MUST be grieving you, with her lukewarmness. But IF there are serious things going on and therefore things to talk about, then you will very naturally be involving others in YOUR world—so you will not have some secret private world that only you know the details of and only you are involved. THAT would make you a “hypocrite” by having two separate, unrelated, non-intertwined worlds, and THAT wouldn’t be Right, of course.

Love, H