The Nature of Friendship

I find myself caught between what I have already defined friendship to be and what God is now showing me it may actually look like in my life.

The troublesome thing about this is it is my own context I created that seems to cause me the most problems.

Let me back up. I have had a yearning for real female friendships in my life for awhile, now. This is largely because I haven't had any of import for the past few years. The reason, again, is mostly myself. After self-destructing one to another, I am a little gun-shy.

My best friend from high school and I had a falling out when I was 17 and drifted so much, we were never able to reconnect.; today we are essentially strangers and I am ashamed at how little a part of her life I am. Then I started burning girls out. My best friend from college and I made a passive-agressive mess of things, before finally allowing it to drift as well into something more safe, if less comforting. And then, of course, there was her lovely fellow artist that I bonded with super quickly and just as quickly estranged by trying to turn her into something she wasn't, and looking to her for validation and support just like I had all the others.

After her, God convicted me that I didn't know how to form or maintain a healthy female relationship, so I withdrew to lick my wounds and start to try and deconstruct where I'd gone wrong.

I've always had an easier time with friendship with guys, but that is tricky and dangerous territory since I am a married woman. A line has to be drawn at a certain point so the wrong messages aren't sent. I'm not the greatest at drawing that line, so aside from my friend Justin from high school (who is also friends with my husband and essentially my brother) I'm not very close to any of my other guy friends. When you are married, most men need to be held at at least arm's length.

For a long while I focused on the one true example of friendship I knew I had; my relationship with my husband. Here is something I know God has given me, because it continues to grow and we continue to have so much fun together, doing even the littlest or stupidest things. But that relationship is unique given our circumstances; we live together and are around each other an awful lot. That's not going to happen with anyone else.

God has blessed me with two female relationships in my life as guides, but neither of them look like my conception of a perfect female friendship.

The first is with my friend Betsy from church. We are not girly together, and seem to relate the best on a mental level. She is very practical and wise, I am very emotional and passionate, and yet somehow it works. But there's no slumber parties or long hangouts here. Betsy is not very emotional herself, and so we meet on the ground we have in common, and more importantly, Betsy is actively helping me in my walk with Christ, trying to show me truth, and counsel me in how I can grow there. She is a mentor and a teacher in many ways; not something my narrow concept of friendship was actively seeking as a possibility. She represents an amazing accomplishment that God has brought about, yet how much I must take her for granted.

The other relationship is with my middle sister, and is a sheer gift from God. All our years growing up together we pretty much hated each other. We beat on each other physically, emotionally, and mentally. I never felt more a failure then in how I related to Valerie, and my automatic reactions to her revealed my own personal sin better than anything ever had.

I finally handed this over to the Lord and asked him to fix it, even though it didn't seem possible.

The next thing I knew Val had approached me saying she wanted to mend our relationship, and we started studying the Bible together. Now I have a great friend that works in my office, carpools with me, and who I always look forward to seeing. I never thought my sister and I would get to that point.

It almost seems greedy to want more than that, and yet it's too late to stop that desire, because I've already formed my own ideas.

The problem is actually there in my books for people to see. While the world I created is not exactly idealized, many of the circumstances very much are. Particularly the group of friends Roxy and, (my two main characters) belong to. They live with a group of people who are always there in the casino together and available at any moment to help deconstruct problems. I was reflecting on them last night and laughingly thought of the part in "Good Will Hunting" where Robin Williams is describing Matt Damon's Southie friends, and says something to the effect of "They would lay down in traffic for him." These are the people I created around Roxy and Larissa, (and who are themselves this same thing to each other and these friends, as well) They would all die for each other in a moment, all are unquestionably loyal and there for each other without thinking. No one is ever abandoned or has to deal with the despair of wondering if the others will have her back.

There are males in this mix, and not just females, but it should be noted there is a decent portion of women: Roxy, Larissa, Pansy, Nancy, and Sunshine, and that they all treat each other this way. There is ultimately no passive-aggressive behavior. Everyone is honest and straightforward. There is no rejection.

I am morbidly afraid of rejection. I have to strive again and again to turn my feelings back over to the Lord every time a friend cancels a date with me or doesn't come to an event I am having. It's extremely hard to not take that personal and believe it's a reflection on me and whether they want to be with me.

So aside from that and having identity issues/needing to learn to look to the Lord to fulfill those feelings, I also am always trying to recreate my little "Heaven on Earth" group of friends I have made in my book. That group of people who all love me unquestionably, who have no major contention, who are loyal to a fault, without thinking.

The problem is that's not real, and every time the Lord tries to show me what He might have in store for me instead, it's hard to put the fantasy aside and accept what He's trying to give me. People are much more messy than that, and I guess I'm not always good with messy. I have a group of girls at church who I want to develop real friendships with. I just keep feeling paralyzed when I make overtures.

I don't have this figured out yet, but here are just some thoughts. It seems like this is a really hard lesson the Lord will be teaching me over this year and on.