What memories flood our minds when we think of the people that have influenced our lives? Was it our parents, a sibling, a particular relative, a special teacher, a classmate, a friend, a boss, a co-worker?

It has been said that people come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When we know why the relationship is, we interact with that person accordingly. This interaction will determine the growing and sustaining of the relationship.

When people come into our lives for a reason, usually it is to meet a need we have expressed. When people come into our lives for a season, it has become our turn to share, grow or learn. Lifetime relationships teach us lifetime lessons.

I have three brothers and two sisters, and it has been amazing the things we remember about our parents who are both dead. We have laughed until we cried remembering not only what they said and did, but also how they said and did things.

Their lifetime relationship with us was invaluable in our developing a solid emotional foundation, accepting the lessons they taught and putting what they taught us to use in all other relationships. When they spoke a life lesson, we knew exactly what they meant!

In addition to our parents, we had this aunt who taught us lifetime lessons. This aunt was our mother's sister, who also had six children. We "lived" at her home and her children "lived" at ours. My mother and my aunt knew how to work, and it seemed they always had plenty of it for us to do.

My aunt had only one son, but she worked my three brothers like they were her own. This continued well into the years after they were adults. She always had hours of work for my brothers to do, and she would be working right along with them.

Neither our aunt nor our mother knew what the phrase "work ethic" meant, but they certainly instilled it in us! Lifetime lessons were always taking place in teaching us the value of work.

Our high school English/Literature teacher was in our lives for a season, and we did grow and learn. She instilled in my siblings, our cousins and many others the value of learning what she taught. She was the absolute best at her profession.

We remember to this day some of the things she taught, how she conducted her class and why she taught the way she did. It made a difference in our job opportunities, our choices of careers, our outlook on life and our attitudes toward learning the things that are worthwhile.

 My former boss came into my life for a reason and a season because he provided me with guidance and support, and I certainly did grow and learn. He was the best boss I ever had. He was a highly educated man, held a very high position, but he was a "real" person.

He was a person that I could talk to and not feel intimidated by or inferior to because he treated me as his equal. He always challenged me to reach higher and "push the envelope" of my ability and value to the office.

At my retirement party, he commended me before my peers and superiors alike for my unwavering stand as a Christian example. We truly are epistles "known and read by all men" (2 Corinthians 3:2 NKJV).

All of us have relationships that were in our lives, are in our lives or will come into our lives that are blessings. Let us all be challenged to make Paul's statement true in our own lives: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you" (Philippians 1:3).