Throwback Moodle Post: A Treatise on Friendship

At times, I get caught up in the titles that we give our friends.  Especially when it comes to the girlfriends.  I do not support…repeat DO NOT SUPPORT… calling your close friends your “bitches” or “hoes” or whatever.  If I call you as such then most likely I am one step away from asking you to step outside while I remove my earrings and prepare to bury you.  Friendship titles aren't that significant post 8th grade, but they continue to play games with people who are insecure..i.e. me.  I scroll through THE Facebook (aka the devil) and see friends throwing up posts about “my bestie” this and “my BFF” that.  Apparently you can have a different BFF every day while I have maybe 5 that I intend to try and keep for a while.  While there isn't an objective definition of what makes up a best friend, and the title doesn't really define the length, breadth, or depth of unconditional and at times sacrificial love and caring you can have for someone else I often take pause because I don’t have people out there posting about me being their “bestie” or “BFF.” I’m the ugly girl at the 8th grade dance holding up the wall with my 3” thick glasses for the 2^nd time in my life.  

Again, this is the danger of social media…comparing your reality with NOT reality.  

Once I wake up from my middle school dance I realize how entirely juvenile and self-centered such thoughts are.    I’m accusing these people of having a best friend “at me” rather than seeing it as a celebration of a great relationship between some folks.  Being someone’s best friend isn't about a sick title.  (Read as: I don't consider my best friends my "besties" because it's fun to say that word.)  It’s about constantly maintaining your focus on loving and serving the other person(s).  I also realize what a poor job I do of telling / showing my friends that I’m close to how much they mean to me, and rest assured that I'm a huge hypocrite because I very rarely, if ever, offer them any title of affirmation.  I have lots of friends but very few close friends and sometimes I delude myself into thinking that they know how I feel.  I do that with Michael Johnson all the time and he’s my boy BFFAEAE.  :) I think some of this spurs from being afraid to be vulnerable.  As one of my friends once said, “Being sentimental and intimate is scary.” So true and yet….

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I used to think that I was a pretty good friend.  Then I started drafting this blog and over several weeks I've been studying God's word in regards to what it means to be a friend.  There are some pretty amazing models of devoted friendship.  Granted we do not live in biblical times or the Middle East but the sentiments and behaviors for the most part are very applicable to where we are today.  Of course Christ is the ultimate model of a friend.   Jesus met, spoke to, and healed lots of people during His time on Earth, but He spent the majority of His time ministering to and serving 12 men whom He called His friends.  These men went on to become His apostles and they continued on after His ascension in one accord as they were called to do.  At one time I could not make heads or tails of Paul's letters to his companions and brethren in the churches, but now I'm beginning to comprehend how much deeper you can love people through the lens of Christ.  

I don't expect to live up to the examples but I know I'm called to love -- read as: love, forgive, cry with, hold on to, speak well of, encourage, provide for materially, etc. -- people as if unto Him and through Him.  Scripture makes it pretty clear how valuable and important it is to have good friends.  In Lendy’s world there may not be another "form" of relationship more important than friendship.  For those of us who are Believers, our Christian friends are members of our spiritual family and we are to love and care for them as such.  

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves