Kite Strings

I have been reading about a book to go with my morning devotionals and sometimes the author just hits the nail on the head. In one entry she talks about having an exhausted heart, where you work really hard towards a relationship and sometimes it just doesn't pan out to what you hoped or expected. She compares it to holding a kite string  where you throw your kite of relationship up into the air and it's fun for a while and then it becomes for work than fun.  Sometimes your kite will soar in perfect harmony between you and the wind, and sometimes it will come crashing down and sometimes you just have to let that kite go and find it's own path.

I realize that I've got to let go of one of my kite strings. I think sometimes that family relationships are the hardest because sometimes you can't just let go. They're family. So you try to mend the relationship or work extra hard at it and it still doesn't look or feel the way you were hoping. I've been struggling with it the last few weeks, but really probably for the last 30 years.

I keep trying to form this relationship into what I think it should be and I think I've been taking the wrong approach all these years.  Maybe I haven't been open or accepting enough. Maybe I've been too critical. Me, critical, no. Yeah, right.  I come by it honestly and it's something I've been working on for the last 14 years.  But anyway, I feel like I have worked really hard on this particular relationship, trying to be supportive, trying to be accepting, trying to be understanding. I think it's been taken warily and the person on the receiving end isn't convinced or understands that I'm trying. So it's accepted, but not really reciprocated.

Anyway, I think it came to a head for me about 3 weeks ago when I found out something out via Facebook (good old Facebook) and was hurt that I found out through a third party called the internet.  That his friends know him so much better than his family ever will. That we will never be let into his core circle.  I feel like all that I've been doing for the last few years has been in vain and that I will never have the relationship with my brother that I've tried to have for so long. So I've decided that I've got to let go of the kite string and not try to maneuver the relationship to what I think it should be and just let it be what it is.

So now that I let go of the kite string...how do I balance loving and accepting a person for who they are, without getting hurt? I don't know...I'm still trying to figure that part out.