Relationships and Rules

A few days ago my friend and I were talking about church rules, family rules, love and relationships. The point of the conversation was that if you have too many rules for the sake of having rules or controlling people, that relationships suffer, thus church members may live in fear or leave the church and children end up leaving the faith of their parents when they have the chance.

Since this was on my mind I thought I'd ask dd a few questions. Actually, I didn't give it much forethought, the questions just "popped" in my head. So I asked her if she thought we had too many rules for her. This surprised her because it was so far away from normal questions that she never expected such a question. But she did say she didn't think we had too many. Then I asked her if she thought my dh and I loved her and had a good relationship with her. She said yes without hesitation. I had one more and told her I wouldn't ask anymore right then. The last question was "is there anything we can do to improve?" She did have one item that I'll not share out of respect for us all. ; )

I was happy to have had that conversation with her and hope to have more in the future to keep communication open.