Today my friend and I were emailing back and forth, discussing the struggles we have in forming deep meaningful relationships. I wrote this to her:
“Sometimes I still am a bit surprised that you (or anyone for that matter) would really want to be my friend and I wonder if you are just putting up with me out of the goodness of your heart. I tell myself that it isn’t true, but it creeps up on me now and then. It is so ingrained in me to believe it, that often the best I can do is act like it’s not true, even though, deep down, I really suspect that it is.”
After I sent that to her, I got to thinking about why that would be. Why do I have that basic belief about myself? Then God reminded me of something that I wrote just last week as part of a new writing project…
When I was a little girl, Wonder Woman was my hero. She was beautiful and strong and she always captured the bad guys. I remember playing in the back yard of my friend Leah’s house when I was seven years old. We ran all over her yard pretending to be superheroes. I did my slow-motion Wonder Woman spin to change from my unassuming alter-ego, Linda Carter, to the fearless crime fighter in a red, white and blue leotard with bullet proof wrist bands and the Lasso of Truth. Leah was Supergirl. We chased bad guys over the top of the play structure, down the slide and around to the front of the house where we captured them and saved the world from their evil plots. It was great fun.
Leah was my best friend. Her family lived around the corner from mine in those days. We played together almost every day. My first sleepover was at her house. I didn’t sleep much that night. The sounds were different. The bed felt different. The moonlight shined into her bedroom differently than it did in mine. I was kind of scared, but I was with my best friend, so I didn’t want to go home.
One day Leah told me that she was having a slumber party at her house. She said she could only invite her five best friends and those were her friends from school, so I wouldn’t be able to come. You see, Leah went to private school and I went to public school, so we had different school friends. She went on to explain that she was sorry, but I was her sixth best friend after Jennifer, Leslie, Allison, Rochelle, and Melissa. That was the day that I realized that Leah only played with me because I lived around the corner from her. She played with me when there wasn’t anyone else for her to play with. That was the day I understood that although I loved Leah and she was my best friend, Leah didn’t really love me. I was only her sixth best friend.
I had a moment of clarity when I realized that this event is the basis for my belief that others wouldn’t really want to be friends with me. I have carried the baggage of this my entire life and I didn’t realize it. A seven year old little girl wrote on my heart that I wasn’t worthy to be her friend and therefore I don’t really believe that I’m worthy of anyone else’s friendship.
I think that the saddest part of that memory is what happened after the slumber party. I stayed away from Leah for a couple of weeks, but then I got lonely. I desperately wanted someone to play with, so I went back to Leah’s house to see if she would play with me. In those two weeks, she didn’t come looking for me even once. She didn’t ask me where I had been. I don’t think she even noticed. I knew that going back meant that I was settling for being her 6th best friend, but I did it anyway.
Now, I can look back on my relationship with Leah with my grown up eyes and see that she was not a good friend to me. I see the ways she talked down to me and showed off all the things she had that I didn’t have. She was bossy and snobbish and she had a mean streak. I don’t think that she meant to hurt me that day, but she did mean to make clear to me that I was not as important to her as her other friends. I just think she was too self-absorbed to realize how much that would hurt.
So now that I know where that belief came from, I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Or about it, because that picture of myself as the sad little girl who isn’t quite good enough to be included is still there. Maybe knowing will enable me to counter those feelings when they come up. Maybe I need to take it to Jesus and ask him to erase those words from my heart and write his truth there, instead.
Here is what I found in the Bible about the truth of who I am to God:
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs —heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8:16-17
According to this, if I am a child of God, then I am God’s heir. Actually a co-heir with Christ. That blows my mind! God values me enough to make me first, his child, and second, an inheritor along with Christ. If Christ is the Son of God and the Prince of Peace, and I have been adopted into the family, then doesn't that make me royalty?
Now that is something I want written on my heart.
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Being Vulnerable
Last Saturday I met with some of the ladies I know from church. We shared coffee and tea and dessert and talked about our babies and friendship. At the urging of my friend (and co-leader of the group) I read the blog post I wrote a few weeks ago about my Fear of Friendship.
It didn’t occur to me that it would be hard to read my own words in front of other people, but when the time came and I spoke the words I had penned regarding my own journey toward meaningful relationships, I became very self-conscious. Talking about my failures at past attempts at friendship and my preference for isolation rather than risking rejection in front of several women I admire and whose opinion I value was difficult, to say the least.
When I finished, I sat there with all those eyes on me and felt that I had laid myself bare before them. I didn’t look up for a little while, because I was a kind of afraid of what I would see on their faces. An interesting thing happened, though. As the conversation got going, one by one, each lady talked about her own challenges in making and keeping friends. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was safe with these ladies. They have the same struggles that I do. They have been hurt, too. They have the same longing to be truly known and loved, faults, craziness and all.
There was a moment when we all looked at each other in a kind of surprise when we realized that every one of us felt the same way. We were all looking for safe friendship. I think it was a moment of unexpected connection. I hope it was the beginning of some wonderful, deep relationships.
We know that God did not intend us to live in isolation. Some of the first words that he said after creating Adam in the Garden of Eve were, “It is not good for man to be alone”. We also know that his plan for the church was to enable us to lived in community with our fellow believers in Christ. So, how is it that we can go to church every week, shake hands with our “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, even attend church social events and then go home feeling so alone? Is it that attending a large church give the illusion of community while still being in the midst of anonymity?
Is it our technology based, fast paced culture that has us spending all our evenings in front of our tv’s and computers instead of visiting with our friends and actually talking to each other?
Is it that we are so media and news saturated that we are afraid to get to know people for fear that they could be a mass murderer in disguise?
It’s probably all of those things, plus a few I haven’t thought of. I do know, however, that we have to find a way to connect with each other on a meaningful level if we are going to have fulfilling lives. I’m starting to learn that what I have to do to get to that place of meaningful relationship is to allow myself to be vulnerable. I have to trust people to know me and not hurt me. As scary as it is, I have to be willing to be seen as I really am in order to be truly known. I’ve also been learning that when I take the step of trusting, others feel a little more comfortable to trust, too. And that's when true relationship develops.
It didn’t occur to me that it would be hard to read my own words in front of other people, but when the time came and I spoke the words I had penned regarding my own journey toward meaningful relationships, I became very self-conscious. Talking about my failures at past attempts at friendship and my preference for isolation rather than risking rejection in front of several women I admire and whose opinion I value was difficult, to say the least.
When I finished, I sat there with all those eyes on me and felt that I had laid myself bare before them. I didn’t look up for a little while, because I was a kind of afraid of what I would see on their faces. An interesting thing happened, though. As the conversation got going, one by one, each lady talked about her own challenges in making and keeping friends. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was safe with these ladies. They have the same struggles that I do. They have been hurt, too. They have the same longing to be truly known and loved, faults, craziness and all.
There was a moment when we all looked at each other in a kind of surprise when we realized that every one of us felt the same way. We were all looking for safe friendship. I think it was a moment of unexpected connection. I hope it was the beginning of some wonderful, deep relationships.
We know that God did not intend us to live in isolation. Some of the first words that he said after creating Adam in the Garden of Eve were, “It is not good for man to be alone”. We also know that his plan for the church was to enable us to lived in community with our fellow believers in Christ. So, how is it that we can go to church every week, shake hands with our “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, even attend church social events and then go home feeling so alone? Is it that attending a large church give the illusion of community while still being in the midst of anonymity?
Is it our technology based, fast paced culture that has us spending all our evenings in front of our tv’s and computers instead of visiting with our friends and actually talking to each other?
Is it that we are so media and news saturated that we are afraid to get to know people for fear that they could be a mass murderer in disguise?
It’s probably all of those things, plus a few I haven’t thought of. I do know, however, that we have to find a way to connect with each other on a meaningful level if we are going to have fulfilling lives. I’m starting to learn that what I have to do to get to that place of meaningful relationship is to allow myself to be vulnerable. I have to trust people to know me and not hurt me. As scary as it is, I have to be willing to be seen as I really am in order to be truly known. I’ve also been learning that when I take the step of trusting, others feel a little more comfortable to trust, too. And that's when true relationship develops.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Scheduling Friendship
In my quest to develop grown-up friendships, I’ve been surprised at how hard it can be to get to know people. My own emotional issues aside, making friends as an adult married woman with children is not like it was when I was younger. In high school and college, I could call someone I wanted to get to know better and say, “Hey do you want go mall or see a movie or something?” and we could make plans for later that day, or at the most, the weekend. Now, if I try to do that, the conversation goes something like this:
Me: ”Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. We should get together. Do you want to do something?”
Friend: “Well, Johnny has soccer tonight and a game on Saturday morning. Jane has ballet tomorrow night and girl scouts on Thursday. Friday is date night with hubby. Saturday night I have a work dinner I have to be at. Hmm. Next week isn’t much better. I, think I can schedule something for next month, if you want, though.”
Me: “Uh…Ok. Let’s do that. Let me know when you can squeeze me in.”
I then hang up feeling dejected, because really, I just wanted to spend some time with a friend chatting and laughing, right now. Not next weekend or next month.
I tried that a few times before I realized that during this season of my life, spontaneous friend dates aren’t going to happen very often. I can’t really get too mad about it, because my schedule is just as busy. The problem is that, generally speaking, when I am free, they are busy and when they are free, I’m busy. Eventually I had to accept the fact that I was going to have schedule time to make friends.
Maybe it’s strange, but this was a really hard thing for me wrap my mind around. I’m not a “schedule” person. I’m not a planner, either, unless I have to be. I have a friend, though, who is a planner, and she was the first one to say, “Let’s put something on the calendar, because otherwise I will never have time for it.”
The first time I heard her say that, it rubbed me the wrong way, because I believed that building a relationship should just happen naturally. Being put into her schedule felt sort of confining to me. Kind of like, “OK, I have a hour block from 2:00 to 3:00 on Sunday, so let’s have a meeting and get to know each other. Bring your bullet point notes of all the important events in your life so we don’t miss anything or get off topic. Be prompt, because I have a 3:15 appointment with my hairstylist and I can’t be late.”
Now, she didn’t say any of this, or imply it even. It’s what I read into her suggestion. What I later came to understand, though, is that in our frantic, 21st century lives, our schedules will fill up whether we want them to or not. Either we have to take control of them and put the things that are important to us on the calendar, or other people and things will find a way to fill all our time slots. When I realized that she was putting time with me on her calendar because she valued it and wanted to make sure it would happen, it changed my entire perspective.
This also made me realize that I had to begin to be deliberate about developing my relationships. I couldn’t just expect them to happen. I had to put effort into them. I had to put some planning into them. I had to make it a priority and maybe sacrifice something for it. I had to give up an occasional evening of my favorite t.v. shows because that is when my friend had some free time. I had to give up my preconceived notions about what my friendships would look like.
So, now I put my friends in my schedule, and they put me in their schedule. It has to be a mutual scheduling effort. Otherwise, it will never happen.
I hope that someday life will slow down in such a way that my friends and I will have the freedom to take a spontaneous trip to the beach just because we feel like drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set over the ocean. For now, though, I’m honored when a lady that I admire values me enough to schedule me into her day.
Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice.
Proverbs 27:9
Me: ”Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. We should get together. Do you want to do something?”
Friend: “Well, Johnny has soccer tonight and a game on Saturday morning. Jane has ballet tomorrow night and girl scouts on Thursday. Friday is date night with hubby. Saturday night I have a work dinner I have to be at. Hmm. Next week isn’t much better. I, think I can schedule something for next month, if you want, though.”
Me: “Uh…Ok. Let’s do that. Let me know when you can squeeze me in.”
I then hang up feeling dejected, because really, I just wanted to spend some time with a friend chatting and laughing, right now. Not next weekend or next month.
I tried that a few times before I realized that during this season of my life, spontaneous friend dates aren’t going to happen very often. I can’t really get too mad about it, because my schedule is just as busy. The problem is that, generally speaking, when I am free, they are busy and when they are free, I’m busy. Eventually I had to accept the fact that I was going to have schedule time to make friends.
Maybe it’s strange, but this was a really hard thing for me wrap my mind around. I’m not a “schedule” person. I’m not a planner, either, unless I have to be. I have a friend, though, who is a planner, and she was the first one to say, “Let’s put something on the calendar, because otherwise I will never have time for it.”
The first time I heard her say that, it rubbed me the wrong way, because I believed that building a relationship should just happen naturally. Being put into her schedule felt sort of confining to me. Kind of like, “OK, I have a hour block from 2:00 to 3:00 on Sunday, so let’s have a meeting and get to know each other. Bring your bullet point notes of all the important events in your life so we don’t miss anything or get off topic. Be prompt, because I have a 3:15 appointment with my hairstylist and I can’t be late.”
Now, she didn’t say any of this, or imply it even. It’s what I read into her suggestion. What I later came to understand, though, is that in our frantic, 21st century lives, our schedules will fill up whether we want them to or not. Either we have to take control of them and put the things that are important to us on the calendar, or other people and things will find a way to fill all our time slots. When I realized that she was putting time with me on her calendar because she valued it and wanted to make sure it would happen, it changed my entire perspective.
This also made me realize that I had to begin to be deliberate about developing my relationships. I couldn’t just expect them to happen. I had to put effort into them. I had to put some planning into them. I had to make it a priority and maybe sacrifice something for it. I had to give up an occasional evening of my favorite t.v. shows because that is when my friend had some free time. I had to give up my preconceived notions about what my friendships would look like.
So, now I put my friends in my schedule, and they put me in their schedule. It has to be a mutual scheduling effort. Otherwise, it will never happen.
I hope that someday life will slow down in such a way that my friends and I will have the freedom to take a spontaneous trip to the beach just because we feel like drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set over the ocean. For now, though, I’m honored when a lady that I admire values me enough to schedule me into her day.
Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice.
Proverbs 27:9
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Fear of Friendship
“If you don’t have three to five good friends in your life, I mean women you are really talking to, that needs to be your number one priority right now.”
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
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