Pursuing Transformation: To be a better friend

If you’ve been following along, you know that I am in the middle of a little series about Pursuing Transformation. It started with this proclamation that I made back in January, pinpointing five areas of my life where I want to see growth in 2015 - and now I'm checking in with each area, sharing where I'm at and encouraging you to do the same.

This week I’m onto my fourth goal – to be a better friend. So far, I feel the least prepared to write an update on this one.

Friendships continue to remain a mystery to me. And honestly still a struggle. Here’s the thing: I really struggle with friendships when they unexpectedly take a turn for a different direction or fall right off the map. It’s happened to me time and time again where I’m super good friends with someone (not just acquaintances- but actual know each other’s deep feelings, thoughts, histories kind of friends) and for no reason that I’m aware of, something switches. Phone calls disappear, text messages remain unanswered, and the once strong bond that made our friendship so beautiful weakens – and with no explanation even when pursued.

I understand that relationships are not easy, that yes there is some truth to the cliché statement of friends are in your life for a reason, season, or a lifetime – but when it feels like someone just ups and leaves your life for no apparent reason and doesn’t have the guts to tell you why they’ve decided to cut you out, that hurts.

I’m a, for lack of a better term, “no shit” kind of gal. If I am struggling with something, I’m not just going to harbor it, talk behind your back and wait until four frustrations later when I finally blow up in your face. If there’s an issue, I want to talk about it and work through it right away, together– with love, and with grace. Being able to be up front with each other, to be honest, and love each other through confrontation brings huge value and trust to a relationship. And I think that’s what makes relationships strong.

But this post isn’t supposed to be about the bitterness that I am still working on in my heart, it’s about how I am going to challenge myself and my role in the friendships that I have. One of my favorite verses is Ephesians 4:15 – it says, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ.” The reason I first fell in love with this verse was because I felt like it was a positive encouragement for healthy confrontation. Encouraging us to speak the truth to each other, bringing up hard conversations, but in a loving manner. And I very much still love it for that reason. But what I’ve been thinking about more lately is a slightly different perspective of the challenge to speak truth in love.

Dealing with all these friendship struggles, the silver lining through it all is that I’ve become so much more thankful for the relationships that I do have. It’s made me realize just how thankful I am for the friends who have stuck it out with me through it all, and it makes me want to tell them just how great I think they are. And that’s what I think the second aspect of speaking the truth in love is, to communicate how much we appreciate each other – to speak that truth in love.

Just as important as it is to be honest about frustrations, it’s even more important to share how valuable I think my friends are, how kind, how encouraging, how much of a huge blessing their friendship is in my life. How often do you go through weeks, months, years, without saying – “hey, you know what? I am so thankful that you are my friend. I really think you are amazing”? Do you tell your friends how much you appreciate them and the way that they wear temporary tattoos with you even though you’re 29 years old? Or tell them how great it is that they care about what you’re doing, encourage you to chase your dreams, giggle together over a glass of wine, play Heads Up in the middle of a restaurant or go to Sephora 1700 times and walk around for way too long. I don’t know about you, but my answer is not enough.

I want to be a friend who is willing to speak truth lovingly in confrontational situations, but even more so I want to be a friend who is known for telling you how loved you are. I want to be a friend who is caring, encouraging, honest, invested, intentional and present through thick and thin. I think that’s what God calls us to be isn’t it? To be a community of men and women who really truly care about each other and communicate that love!

That’s how I want to be a better friend. I want the people in my life to know how thankful I am for them, and I’m looking forward to showing them.

If you, too, have awesome friends in your life, maybe you want to join me in telling them. Shoot a text message, send a fun card, a lil email, or maybe even give them a call and actually say the words! Let’s be a community known for speaking the truth in love, both in the good and in the bad.

Xo

Friendships in your 20's

Growing up, I’ve realized that friendships in your 20’s are hard. Everything seems to change in your relationships because people are moving across the country, getting married, figuring out who they are and who they want to be, having babies, getting established in a career, and all the other joys of getting older. All of these things are great, don’t get me wrong, but all of this contributes to a new place in life where friendships seem to be a lot more difficult to maintain.

I miss the easiness of friendship in college and high school, when it was all about fun and games, when you saw each other every day, and building friendships and spending time together was really a huge focus in our lives. I understand that things change, and that friendships won’t always look the same, but I have to be honest- this has been a really, really difficult realization for me to grasp lately.

I highly value my relationships and have always been a huge fan of having heart to hearts, intentional hang time, being vulnerable, and really just living life with one another through the nitty gritty as well as the fun. Not having as much of this in my life lately, I’m really craving depth and intentionality in my relationships, and missing the times that it came so naturally.

God created us to live in community, to need each other, to support each other, to encourage one another and build each other up. I’m so thankful for that reminder because it encourages me that my desires for deep friendships are not me being crazy or selfish or something, it’s just how God created me to be.

Struggling with this void, I’ve learned that you can’t force things, and you can’t make relationships fill a hole that the other person might not even know is there. I’ve shed a few tears here and there, but I don’t want to wallow in this sadness. I want to try to adjust and figure out what the Lord might be teaching me in this time. I’ve been blessed with some amazing friendships, I am so thankful! I just now need to focus less on what is missing and more on making the most of every relationship I have in front of me.

Romans 14:19 has been an encouragement to me in this time as it says, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification.” This section of Romans talks about how we are to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ, how we are to accept one another, just as Christ accepts us.  I know it might sound slightly unrelated, but it has really helped me change my focus.  Instead of trying to fix what's missing or force my relationships to be what I need all the time, I'm trying to make every effort to bring peace into them.  The way I see it is, I have two choices-  to be frustrated and sad, or make every effort to make the most of them. That’s what I’d like to be my goal as I navigate this new territory, to seek the Lord and make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification in my relationships.

Praying that you, too, might be encouraged with any struggle you're dealing with.  You are not alone.  Sending love your way!  xoxo

Is Facebook really that healthy?

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. 

Sometimes I think it's great. It's a great way to stay in touch with people from college, with friends who live in another country, and a way to reconnect with long lost friends. It's fun to see what people are up to, to post pictures of special events, to create an event to get people together; it's definitely a boredom filler.

But is it really a good or healthy thing? Stalking people (not in a full blown creepy way- just the typical Facebook way) by looking at pictures of friends you aren't even connected with anymore... that is really what a lot of people do on Facebook isn't it? I know I am guilty! Especially now that I have an iPhone. If I'm bored, or sitting waiting for someone to meet me at a coffee shop, why not fill the time checking out the News Feed on Facebook? But really- WHY? Half of the people's pictures that I am looking at, I haven't talked to in years. Some of them I really have never talked to- I don't really know why I am even connected with them.

With my frustration against Facebook today- it is really easy for me to see all the negative impacts that it could have on people's lives. At this point, I should probably admit that there was a dumb incident that is the reason for this rant against Facebook... it frustrates me to even mention it because it makes me realize the impact that I have allowed a social-network to have on me. Long story short- I realized that someone had de-friended me.

[Honestly- I don't even know why it bothers me. We were never really actual friends. She always had some strange issue with me, I could never figure it out. It was a high school thing; even some of my girl friends knew that she didn't like me. I tried to just shrug it off, realize that not everyone in life is going to be my number one fan and let it go. But I'm a person with feelings, so of course it still didn't feel nice.]

Going back to Facebook- this whole dumb incident made me think about the negative effects that this social network can have on people. I would be really interested to know if there is a statistic about how Facebook affects depression or body image or self esteem. I can only imagine that each of these would be affected negatively right? You see all these pictures of beautiful people online, doesn't it make you wish that you looked like that? Or had that specific outfit. What if you friend request someone and they don't accept? Or you ask someone to hang out, they say they can't and then you realize they were hanging out with other people? How about middle schoolers, or teenagers who are so affected by peer pressure or what their friends do. This cannot be a healthy thing for them can it? You can basically see what everyone else is doing, which means you can see what you're left out from- who is "not your friend", what boys are giving what girls more attention... and so on.

I am doing a body image seminar with a friend for a middle school ministry at a church next weekend, and thinking about that seminar and this dumb situation with Facebook just made me think that there's got to be some link to people having skewed body images, or self esteem as a result of this website. I consider myself a pretty secure, confident person- I am happy with who I am physically, I have great friends, feel like I'm pretty nice (I'm human, I can be mean too) and overall I'm in pretty good spirits. If a dumb "de-friending" situation can cause me to be shaken a bit, feeling a little dejected, a bit unloved and questioning why this "friend" has chosen to "end our relationship"- then how significantly does this affect an insecure, unstable, young girl who is still trying to figure out who she is and very much affected by what people think of her??

I know I can't fix this problem. And I know that not everything is bad about Facebook. Does it mean I am going to jump ship and close my account? Honestly, probably not. But does it make me second guess the benefits of the site, and the role I allow it to have in my daily life? Absolutely. I can control how I much I am impacted by it, by limiting how much I go on, or how much I let myself become caught up in it, or obsessed with seeing what other people are doing. I just hope that others can do the same, that they can find their identity and security in who they really are and not let a social-network tell them otherwise.