The Dangers of Assumption

Two are better than one,

Because they have a good reward for their labor.

For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls,

For he has no one to help him up.

Ecclesiastes 4:9,10

Do me a favor today? If you live with someone, walk across the room and  grab their hands and look in their eyes and ask them if everything is okay. Even if you think everything is alright.

They may smile, shake their head and pull away, or think you're being silly. They might giggle or laugh self-conciously. But then again they might surprise you and words might come tumbling out. Words they have been waiting to share.

Chances are, if you are living with someone, you have settled into a routine of what you call normal. Maybe one person is more silent, and the other one's the talker. And usually it works. Life hums along. But when stress and life and circumstance come beating against the door, the seismic pattern shifts. All of a sudden what worked yesterday, is broken today.

Maybe it happened so gradually that you didn't even notice. But now the silence is deafening and you, being the quiet one, pull in even further. You think maybe leaving them alone in their silence will fix it.....make the problem go away. But it never will.

If someone you love is quiet and they usually aren't, something may be drastically wrong, and more silence won't fix it.

They will wonder why you are leaving them alone.........They will wonder why you are leaving them to battle it out all my themselves.......They will wonder if you care at all.

Learn from me........I have made this mistake in the past, and I am sure I will again, of assuming that everything is okay, and then being shocked into awareness that things are very much not okay.

Leave a note in your wallet if you have to. Take it out and read it again and again.

Then do what it says.

Talk.