Ever had a pebble chip your windshield?

If you have, then you know that the first thing you do is get it repaired. If you don’t, that small chip will turn into a big crack.

I’m guessing there are relationships in your life right now that have a small chip.

This leaves you with two options:

1) Ignore it (and hope it just goes away)

2) Take care of it (and don’t take your chances)

If you ignore it, odds are that small chip in your relationship will grow into a full-blown fracture.

If you take care of it, you may prevent that small chip from becoming a full-blown fracture.

Make the first move.

Take care of the chip.

And don’t do crack.

My wife almost bought me a t-shirt that said, “Mess with me and you mess with the whole trailer park.” I wish she would have. I hold fond memories of those trailer tribes.

In the trailer parks I lived in, traditional families were rare. Single mothers like mine worked two or three jobs and this left kids like me unsupervised and alone. However, the families that did exist often kept watch over the rest of us and what few men there were became patriarchs of the trailer park. If there were any problems, the men came out from under the hoods of their trucks to make sure peace was kept in our little slice of America. But they couldn’t stop our biggest threat to tranquility: tornadoes.

Twisters gravitate to trailers like preteen girls to Justin Beiber. Most parks I lived in as a child had a communal shelter where everyone gathered when a funnel cloud formed. Those subversive cellars became a redneck haven- packed with people, toolboxes, shotguns, dogs, cigarettes, and a single radio to keep tabs on the storm.

During tornado season, we’d make regular trips back and forth to the shelter. In the midst of it all, a common bond was created among the trailer tribe. The kind that happens when a group of people go through a shared ordeal together. I loved it. Ironically, I felt safer underground in the center of the storms than I did above ground on sunny days. Not only that, my craving to belong was satisfied. If only for a little while.

It’s fascinating how all people, in all times, and all cultures, form societies. We do this partly for protection, but mostly, I think, we do it to be connected with one another. It’s a deep-seeded need we all carry.

In his book, Eternal Echoes, Irish Philosopher John O’Donohue writes, “Everyone longs for intimacy and dreams of a nest of belonging in which one is embraced, seen and loved. Something within each of us cries out for belonging. We can have all the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement and possession, yet without a true sense of belonging, our lives feel empty and pointless. Like the trees that puts roots deep into the clay, each of us needs the anchor of belonging in order to bend with the storms and continue toward the light.”

Follow the longing to belong far enough and you will arrive at its source.

This is one of the reasons I believe in God.