What happens when a season changes? How do we know life is definitively different enough to call it changed? Where is the nice transition and crescendo into the key change? Where is the fading brush stroke that paints a permanent fixture of beauty on the night sky before all light is gone? I have been ponderous over the last couple days for a few reasons. Many times over the last three years I wrote about relationships and had many ideas about how things should work, regarding communication, propriety, even the nature of love. I looked back over what I wrote and now find myself relearning and rewriting much of what I thought before. My reference point was an ugly, dark relationship that thrived off of sin and partial love. I searched the scriptures trying to fill the void of unmet expectations about love and marriage. I wanted to believe it was so much more than what was about to happen. Now I find myself in a relationship that is beautiful, and we communicate very well, and everything I thought I would never find in a woman is in her. She points to Christ with her life and is gracious. When we are both longing for something more permanent but time is not yet right, it is a new challenge to trust the Lord for patience. So what looks like a relationship going really fast is really just a different approach to building a bridge of trust that will bear the weight of love, in marriage. Some people might view a dating relationship as a straight line between two points. A___|______|_____|___B_______________C------------------------------- "A" is the begining of the relationship that is on course toward marriage as the end goal "C." Between "A" and "B" a foundation of trust is being built by sharing in life with one another while learning about the other person's values. There is also a great degree of communication practice that takes place during this time. If "B" is the point of engagement and "C" is marriage, then the values that were discussed between A and B are put into a practical strategy for the time after C. Some people would also add checkpoints, or conversation points that are only crossed at certain points in the relationship. Often times these are referred to as emotional boundaries. Once these boundaries have been crossed it is generally expected that marriage happen. What happens is when someone from outside the relationship, operating from the linear point of view, observes checkpoints being passed very quickly, the judgement is made that the relationship is moving too quickly. Shall I suggest however that there is another approach to relationships that may be more healthy if the couple is mature and serious about getting married? Instead of a straight line imagine a spiral. The outer rim of the spiral represents the beginning of the relationship while the center of the spiral represents the consumation of the relationship in marriage. At the outer rim of the spiral a broad set of catagories are discussed which may include any of the taboo converstation topics that are only expected after certain checkpoints in the linear model. Topics such as marriage, and likes and dislikes, or perhaps past struggles, and other values based issues can be discussed in the broadest sense even at the beginning of the relationship. As the relationship progresses, following the curve of the spiral inward, we find that many of the issues discussed earlier in the relationship are still applicable but begin to take on a sense of permanence, or anticipation for life together. In this way the spiral method encourages a pattern for communication that will be necessary for a marriage relationship. Instead of stalling between topics in the linear model, trust continues to be developed as issues are more tightly discussed and resolved. This way the journey becomes about building trust, not checking off discussion topics on a list with marriage being the final checkpoint (pending checkout). Is it really "moving too fast" to discuss topics relevant to life and are concerns when they are discussed mainly to understand values? Remember this is the beginning of a relationship we are talking about. Ben | 
