This is a story about the kind of relationships I want with and for all people.

[Today I am finishing up a writing series about race and current events I started at the beginning of July 2020 (see “Black Power & Little Micah,” “Measuring The Problem,” “Profiled,” and “The Cost of Slavery – And an Important Lesson“) with the goal of encouraging thought and out-of-the-echo-chambers conversation.  I probably haven’t gotten everything right or said everything right, but I hope I have encouraged you to think and that we all will have a better perspective of what is both true and good.  Our society depends on people who disagree being able to discuss ideas and perspectives with humility, respect, and a desire for the truth.  This is my small contribution to a better future through conversation.]

A year and a half ago my grandfather in western Oklahoma died.  The funeral was scheduled really quickly.  Anyone who was going to make it, needed to drop everything and start heading that way.

So the very next day, my two sisters and I left our families behind, jumped into a car and started the sixteen-hour road-trip – our first road-trip together in our adult lives.  It was great!  Our time together on the road was one of the most memorable and meaningful parts of a very memorable and meaningful trip. My sisters and I have been friends our whole lives, but this was a special opportunity and I think we all knew it.

We told stories, caught up on life, recalled old memories, laughed, joked, picked on each other, danced to music, and solved life’s problems.  It was wonderful!

But then, about ten hours or so into the return-trip, we got into a fight.  Maybe there were wrongs to go around.  I don’t remember.  I just remember my own.  I found out I had been talking to one of my sisters in a way that had been hurting her feelings – for a long time.  All of a sudden our relationship was in danger.  I was scared and sorry. 

We kept working through it and acknowledged an unhealthy dynamic that had been in our family for a long time.  We named it, owned it, and Lord help us, left it behind. 

Remembering that fight today is still painful, but it’s not a bad pain.  It is a pain that says, “Something significant was discovered here.  Don’t forget it.”  It is a pain that deepened my relationships with those I love.  It says, “Our relationship, our love and commitment to each other, is strong enough to get through hard things together.”

There is a lot I am incredibly grateful for from that road-trip, but I might be grateful for that fight most of all.  Maybe that fight, and working our way through it reveals the depth of our relationship more than all the laughing, joking, and shared memories combined. 

This is what good relationships look like to me.  I know every healthy marriage has dozens of road-trip stories just like this one.

These road-trip kind of relationships are the kind of relationships I want with people – white people, black people, brown people, tall people, short people, introverts, extroverts, liberals, conservatives – all of them.  It’s the kind of relationships I want us all to have – relationships full of love and laughter, fighting and forgiveness, shared memories, and silly jokes – and the kind I am regularly working towards (mainly by working on me).  It might not work out every time, but it is worth aiming for.

I think these are the kinds of relationships that the God who loves each of us so much wants us to have with each other.  I think God wants us to live like family.

I hope you do too.

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You may also be interested in:

• The Cost of Slavery – And An Important Lesson
• Profiled
• Measuring The Problem
• Black Power and Little Micah
• To My Young Black Friend
• Kristen, Tonya, & Prejudice
• Our Inadequate View of Slavery
• The Good Xenophobe
• Cops, Black Kids, & The Way of Jesus
• Fredrick Douglass & Identity Politics
• Race is a Meaningless Distinction
• The Dangers of Trial-By-Media