Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and as you’re talking you receive some sort of epiphany, a realization on the topic at hand, and you just start blurting out words hoping they make sense to the other person? That happened to me last weekend.

I was having dinner with my dear friend Rhonda. I call her a dear friend, which doesn’t really seem to do the relationship justice. She is one of a handful of people in whom I would trust my life. But that’s another conversation.

As we talked about life and faith and hopes, I began to see something about relationships I had yet to understand.

I’ve no idea if I will ever be in a dating relationship again. I hope so, but I have no control over that. What I do have are these amazing people in my life to whom I can give myself right now. We can have great conversations over meals and wine and walks in a park. We can spend time laughing at the silliest things, like fear of bugs and dumb jokes and our personal quirks and the struggle to find the right person. We can text or talk or video chat to get us through the mundane moments of the day.

Don’t get me wrong. In the back of my mind, I’m keeping an eye out for that special woman with whom I’d like to exclusively share life. Maybe I’ve met her already and I just don’t know how to get things started (the probability of this being the case is very high). But until I know that time has come, I’m blessed with some fucking amazing people that I can walk through life with today.

What I told Rhonda at dinner is that I don’t need to conserve my relational energy for my next relationship. What if that day never comes? What I need to do is to live generously and with abandon for the people in my life now.

Someone said once, “There are some people in life who make you laugh a little louder, smile a little bigger, and live just a little bit better.” It took me some time to realize the people in my life now do all of this and more. What more could I ask for?