8
the company of women
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
—C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays
I was taking a walk beneath the wide-open Colorado sky. At the height of summer, the warmth embraced me like an old friend. The sky was cloudless, the blue opaque. Above me two hawks were catching the upward drafts and calling to one another with joy. I stopped to watch them, longing to be able to fly myself. Someday, I thought. The red-tailed hawks had their world to themselves: an open sky, no other birds of prey, no eagles or crows to trouble them, just endless space beckoning them to do what they do best.
And then they flew right into each other. Smack! What? They both must have been startled. The hawks tumbled many feet in the air before recovering. Then they resumed their play. Or maybe it was their practice.
I thought, Well, it happens. If you are soaring or practicing or tumbling in the proximity of others, every now and again you will smack into them. Then a choice must be made. Either resume flying, perhaps a little wiser for the sting, or take your wings and go home. Retreat to the nearest safe perch.
As followers of Christ, we are not called by God to live a life where safety is the highest goal. Nor is comfort. You knew this already. But dang. I still struggle with accepting it.
The highest goal is love. Always. Well then. In order to be loved and to love, we cannot sit this life out. We have to engage with those folks God has brought us. No woman is meant to live her life as a solo act. We need women to help us on our way. Supporting us. Encouraging us. Challenging us. Calling us back onto the dance floor or into the sky to do what we are meant to do and become who we are meant to become.
Men do that for women, and women do that for men. But we women need other women in our lives. We receive things from women that we do not receive from men. And no one knows what it’s like to be a woman better than another woman.
friendship is messy
I must admit right off the bat that although I deeply believe we need women in our lives, those relationships can often sting. Like every other relationship, our friendships with women can be hard. I know we need women in our lives, but sometimes, like you, I can be intimidated by their strength, their beauty, their way. Sometimes I retreat from them; from their overwhelming presence or their overwhelming need. Sometimes I am overwhelming myself. I am a woman, after all. And a woman is a wondrous creature with a capacity to affect her world beyond measure.
A woman can be strong yet tender. Powerful yet soft. Fierce with the potential to be kind. Wise but sometimes foolish. Romantic. Cynical. Merciful. Wounded. Beautiful. Silly. Nurturing. Mysterious even to herself. Courageous. Odd. Vulnerable. Beaten down through the centuries yet continually rising up generation after generation. Feared and fearsome. Get a group of them together, moving toward the same goal, and power is released. Nations are forged. Justice is spread. The kingdom of God advances.
Women are awesome. Yet sometimes getting near them is like approaching a cactus, hugging a porcupine, or taming a skunk. We get pricked and sprayed. We prick and we spray a good bit ourselves. But still, we need women in our lives. Though at times it may be tempting to resign ourselves to a circle of polite and superficial female relationships, it is not a wise thing. We need women with whom we can be honest about the realities of our lives, both the internal and the external realities. We need women friends who offer us truth in return. We need relationships with women in all their manifest forms, but mostly we need to have a few women friends.
I have a very dear friend who in her fierce loyalty to me signs many of her cards and emails with “Your forever friend.” She writes that to me, fully aware that I am no longer certain such a thing exists on this side of eternity. My heart has become wary, and my friend pushes against my wariness in loving and unyielding proclamations of faithful friendship. In the face of her love, my wary heart is softening. In the face of her consistent offer of relationship, my heart is healing. Friends can wound at times, deeply, yes. But friends can bless, too. Profoundly.
A good friend loves you when you are hilarious and when you are hurting. A true friend loves you when you are being kind and when you are PMS-ing all over the place. They may not love what you are doing, or the dragon you are manifesting, but they love you. They know who the true you is, and even in the midst of your living as an imposter to your very self, a friend calls you up and out. A friend sees who you are meant to be and beckons you to rise to the higher version of yourself.
Friendship is a high and holy thing, and a two-way street. Friendships with women are also messy. They are not for the faint of heart.
I have learned a few things about friendships with women over the years, and where I have made mistakes, I have made colossal ones. I’d love to spare you that, as much as possible anyway. What I have learned, I offer to you.
hold your friends loosely, but hold them
Friendship is risky, costly. Friendship is meant to provide a refuge from loneliness, and a respite from self-criticism and the critique of a never-satisfied world. Friendship is a relationship of mutual enjoyment. It is a place where our hearts don’t have to work quite so hard to be heard and understood and accepted. Friendship is supposed to offer a taste of what is coming when our souls will be fully known and completely at rest.
But just a taste. I have found that the people I love and who love me deeply are not able to satisfy my insatiable soul in a lasting way. But man, have I wanted them to. “Fill me!” I’ve cried. “Satisfy me!” John has tried to fill me. Friends have tried to fill me. And their offerings have been marvelous. But never enough. I have a leak. Really, it’s a break in the pipe, and, aware of my own brokenness, I have tried to hide it and get other people to tend it. It hasn’t worked. My demanding has backfired. I have learned the hard way—and just about everything I have learned, I have learned the hard way—the beautiful freeing truth that Jesus is the only One who can satisfy me. He’s actually the only one who is meant to!
Coming to know Jesus more truly as my primary forever Friend is freeing my heart to offer and receive the amazing gift of friendship. Friendship, fellowship, is a gift, one that each of us is meant to enjoy and offer. We need each other. But in order to continue to move toward one another and receive freely what others are meant to share with us, we need Jesus.
Who among us has not suffered betrayal at the hands of a trusted friend? Who among us has not shrunk away in response to being hurt? Which one of us has not been responsible for wounding another? We all have.
We all have.
We need Jesus. We need mercy. We need healing. We are not meant to live this life alone, and we won’t get very far along on our journey if we try. We don’t have the luxury of insisting we never be hurt again. We don’t get to insist on anything, really. Except maybe we can insist on continuing to press in to Jesus, no matter what.
He’s here. He’s waiting. He has never betrayed you, and he never will. He is the Source of our true identity. He is the One we must look to first to fill us with truth, acceptance, and love. Then we can bring our hearts, be they bursting with joy or battered by life, to our friends without demanding that they fill us. We can offer ourselves, open to receive good gifts from them but vigilant to stay close to our God and screening every experience, every word, through him. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is perfect love, and he loves you perfectly. And he’s not going anywhere.
Friendships do change. People change. You change. You are supposed to. You may still be walking in the same direction in life as a dear friend, but your paths may no longer cross. Churches split. Bible studies end. Children switch schools. Gyms close. People move. Jobs change. The natural and easy ways that we as friends connect shift under our feet, and it takes enormous effort on both sides for the friendship to shift and continue as well. Perhaps it is meant to continue. Perhaps it isn’t. Some friends we are called to fight for and some we are called to release.
I was at a Graham Cooke conference a number of years ago when he taught about how our friendships change and how normal that is. He said most friendships last three to five years. Really? And, he said, they are meant to have a duration of three to five years. Not every friend in our lives is meant to walk with us through the remainder of our lives. Oh, we love them still. And though all change feels like loss, it is good to bless people on their way, to hold them loosely, and to let them go.
The ironic thing is, I was at that Graham Cooke conference with a close friend who I deeply loved and who I was not holding with a loose hand but with a clenched fist. We had been friends for many years, and I assumed we would be friends for the rest of our lives. I ignored the telltale signs of change. This friend had been moving away from me for quite a long while, but I absolutely refused to see it. I wanted what I wanted. I thought she was fabulous. Surely she must feel the same way about me!
Somewhere along the way, my desire for relationship turned into demand, and demand is one of the death knells of a friendship—of any relationship, really. I needed to unclench my fist and in love let my friend go. I also needed to invite Jesus into the places of my heart that had refused to see that it was time to let her go.
Insisting. Demanding. Refusing. I promise you, those are not verbs that lead to the life Jesus has for us.
Not every woman or man in your life is going to stay in your life for the duration of it. Not every person you long to have a friendship with is meant to be your friend. (Sorry. Now take a big, deep breath.) It can be excruciating to let a friend go, or worse, to be let go of. Many people underestimate the closeness of heart that women friends are capable of reaching. How well I remember sobbing in the arms of a precious friend when my young family was moving across the country. It felt like my heart was being torn out. And we loved each other. How much worse it is when a friendship ends because of offenses, misunderstandings, anger, or betrayal. How searingly painful it is when God calls you to walk away from a cherished friend when love and unity have left the relationship.
We are meant to grow and change and become throughout the duration of our lives, and we need to be surrounded by people who celebrate the person we are becoming. Our true friends are people who are our biggest cheerleaders and encourage us on to the next higher version of ourselves whom God is calling us up to. Friends delight in one another’s successes and blessings and are vigilant against jealousy and envy.
Jealousy and envy are two additional death knells to a friendship. God does not want us to be jealous of what a friend receives or achieves. We are called to rejoice with them. We want the best for our friends always and only. Walking with a friend through trials requires much tenderness, grace, and wisdom on our part, but it is actually more difficult to walk with a friend through a season of success and blessing. “We didn’t get a vacation like that.” “I wish I had been given the opportunity to travel.” “I love their new sofa. I wish I had a new sofa.” Careful.
It’s a challenge. Loving people through travail and success requires much from us. God is always at work sifting and shaping, purifying and clarifying, what is in our hearts. To stay in relationship with another person requires first that we stay in relationship with God. He is the only way we can navigate through jealousies that rear their ugly heads or offenses from others that prick our vulnerable hearts.
Truth be told, a good part of our becoming takes place in the sanctifying work of relationships. And not because friendship is always a greenhouse, either. Trees grow strong because of winds; drought forces their roots to go deeper. There isn’t anything on earth like relationships to make you holy. When our frail humanity is revealed in some way we and others don’t like, we bring it to God. We ask for forgiveness. We ask for his life to fill us and his love to flow through us. Which means “Christ in me, love through me” becomes a regular prayer.
It always comes back to Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
be careful with your expectations
Sometimes I am absolutely amazed at how much Jesus loves people. Some days—okay, most days—people can be pretty odd. We are all living on the island of misfit toys, and most of us are not even aware that one of our wheels is in the shape of a square. We bump into each other. We step on each other’s toes, and then what is one to do?
Friendships can be hard. They are opposed by the Enemy. They need to be fought for. Anything worth having and cherishing is.
For many years, I thought that a cherished best, best friend would be a woman who understood me at all times and enjoyed all the same things I enjoyed. She’d want to go to a movie when I wanted to go to a movie, and she would want to see the same show I wanted to see. She would be passionately in love with Jesus and desire him above all else and always point my heart back to him. I would do the same for her, and she would think I was amazing and wise and justified in my mood swings. She would be available to me whenever I called and only be encouraging and empathetic. She would vote for the same candidates I vote for. She would always get my jokes and want to eat at the same restaurant I wanted to eat at, and she would never be offended by a failure of mine. Oy! And, yeah, I know, embarrassing, right?
But Oprah has Gayle. Rachel has Monica. Wilma has Betty. Aren’t they all that for each other? I’m whining now.
Actually, I am being ridiculous. Because I am a woman blessed in friendship. I have more than my share of amazing friends, friends who are the Best. I am a rich woman. And I am learning that each of these variously gifted women offers something of unique value that the others don’t. Their very differences from each other and from me enrich my life! No one woman could possibly be everything to me. God is meeting my need for friendship, just not through one person. Some women are blessed with a best friend. But most women aren’t. Most of us have a few friends that provide something we need, and we provide something they need. Our hearts are met in many ways, by the beautiful offerings of a few. I don’t think a human being is actually able to bear the burden of being someone’s one and only. God alone can be our One and Only.
God understands us all the time. He is available every moment. People don’t and aren’t. They have lives and schedules and a myriad of people pulling on them, and that makes them normal and not at our beck and call. Jesus calls us “friend.” Oh, to know him more deeply as that. I want to know him as my King and my God and my Friend who enjoys me fully, accepts me completely, and loves me unconditionally. Because that is who he is.
Friends are sometimes referred to as “Jesus with skin on,” people sharing our humanity and reminding us of the higher truths: there is a God, and he loves us. We need to be reminded. Continually. Left to ourselves, we quickly forget everything that is vital to remember. Solitary confinement is a form of punishment, of torture. Loneliness is a sorrow, separation a grief, and distance painful. Companionship and friendship are human needs, as necessary to our becoming ourselves as air to our lungs and food to our bodies.
be careful with the truth
It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook
A word about honesty. The Scripture exhorts us to speak the truth in love. Speak the truth in love. Which means, don’t speak the truth in anger or resentment or with the desire to wound. We need to be careful to check our motives underneath our speaking the truth. We want to be aware of the “why” behind the desire to share something. We want to know that we are speaking the truth with the desire to love, to bless. A dear friend told me that when we don’t speak the truth in love, it is no longer truth.
And the Scripture does not exhort us to speak everything that is true. In our culture of honesty, we may feel compelled to share everything with our husband or with our close friends, even the negative things. We want to be honest, right? We don’t want to have secrets from each other, right? Wrong. To share with one you love or are friends with every thought or emotion that goes through your head wreaks havoc on the relationship. No friendship, no marriage, has the capacity to carry the burdens of our every nuance. Only Jesus does. He knows us. We don’t shock him. We are not too much for him. Sharing truth with a friend or a husband in the desire to keep nothing between us can overwhelm the person and the relationship. Good heavens. Of course we don’t share everything with our friends. We are tactful. We are honest but only to the point of loving.
I have really blown it here. I once told a good friend about negative feelings I had held about her. I had been jealous of this woman and the close relationship she had with someone that I had wanted to have a close relationship with too. I felt edged out. Three’s a crowd and all that. When I realized the unreality of those emotions in the face of the truth—that I loved this woman—I confessed them to her. I told her how untrue those feelings were. I was sorry for them.
Okay, that went over well. Yes, confession is good for the soul, but confession to whom? And good for whose soul? Not to the person you had hurtful thoughts about! Please be shaking your head, saying, “I can’t believe Stasi was that stupid to do that.” I can’t believe it either. But I was. I have asked for forgiveness. But you know as well as I do that words once spoken cannot be unspoken. Wounds can be healed. Damage can be addressed. Forgiveness can be bestowed. Words cannot be erased.
Any relationship, a friendship or a marriage, cannot sustain the brunt of total honesty. Relationships are not meant to be the dumping grounds of every negative thought, belief, or emotion. Let me give you a couple more horrid but true examples.
I was going for yet another walk around our block in Southern California, pushing both my sons in a stroller. My baby was only weeks old, and his brother was months shy of turning two. Our walk was our big outing for the day, unless we had the highlight of going to the grocery store. But most days, John had our one car, and our walk was our wonder.
This day, as I was walking, a woman called to me from the other side of the street from the middle school field. Waving to get my attention, she ran across the street with a teenager. She introduced herself and the unhappy teenage boy she had dragged along with her. She told me he had come to apologize for the insults he had hurled at me the day before when I was walking by, pushing my stroller. She turned to the embarrassed youth and told him it was mean of him to call me a fat slob and an awful collection of other names. He mumbled an apology, I accepted, and—satisfied for seizing her moment—the woman went back across the street with her student.
The thing is, I hadn’t heard the young man the day before. The noise of the traffic had muffled his voice, and I had been blissfully unaware of his diatribe. Now I wasn’t. Now I was filled with shame. I didn’t walk that route again. See, I didn’t need to know.
Okay. One more. A woman had a close friend who was beginning to soar in her calling. The woman cheered her friend on but became increasingly aware of envy gnawing at her inside. She wasn’t soaring. Her calling was not unfolding in a glorious way like her friend’s was. To keep “nothing from separating them,” this woman shared with her friend her envy—confessed it and released the burden of it onto her friend.
Why did she do that? Who felt better after the exchange? Who felt worse?
Dear one, they don’t need to know everything. When we are struggling with negative emotions, we bring them to Jesus and maybe to a counselor, a pastor, our spouse, or a different trustworthy friend. And when we are through with the negative, separating feelings, we don’t dredge them back up and pour them out onto the heart of the one we have finally come to terms with. We can do great damage to one another in the name of “honesty.”
As women growing into the fullness of who we are created to be, we speak only the truth that God calls us to speak, in love, and only when he calls us to speak it.
forgive offenses
Misunderstanding one another is so easily and frequently done, it’s a miracle any relationship survives. The only way is love. Paul says love “keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5). In loving relationships, we want to throw away the list in our heads of wrongs done to us and ignore them when they raise their indictments yet again. Too often we keep those lists, ruminate on them, and nurse them like a wounded animal. We say we forgive—and we may even believe we have—but when the list presents itself again we entertain it with a sort of sick satisfaction. “See what they did? Remember what she said?” We have taken the bait of offense. We are inside the trap.
The word used in Scripture for offense actually means “bait,” the bait that is placed inside a trap to lure an animal to its death.
Offenses need to be forgiven quickly, or they will fester and poison the relationship. The poison seeps out and affects our own souls as well. Offenses that are held on to lead to death.
People will hurt us. We will hurt and offend as well. We all will do this with intention and without, with our thoughts bent to wound and with no thought at all. Jesus took all our offenses into his broken body when he died for us, and he took everyone else’s as well. All that he suffered—the beating, the scourging, the mocking, and finally the crucifixion—was more than enough to pay for it all. Our offenses and theirs.
Once when I was reeling from being badly hurt by a person, something wicked rose up in me and I had to admit that, ugly as it was, I wanted them to suffer for it as much as I was suffering. A picture immediately came to my mind of Jesus, tortured and bleeding, and the Holy Spirit asked, “Is this suffering enough?” Yes. Yes, it is. Sometimes in our humanity we may feel that in order for justice to be done, a person needs to pay for their offense. Well, Jesus took their bill. It’s been paid for.
With the help of God, we must choose to forgive. Let it go. Let them go. Come out of the trap.
Dear God, I forgive all those who have hurt me, and I bless them in Jesus’s Name. I pray only more of you to them, for them. And God, I forgive myself for having hurt others. Please fill me with your Spirit and live and love through me that I might become a woman after your heart who loves others well. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.
discern and break unholy ties
“Blest Be the Tie that Binds” is an old hymn celebrating the beauty of Christian fellowship and unity.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father’s throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.
We share each other’s woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.1
Back during the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s we sang an updated version, “We Are One in the Bond of Love.” There are holy and beautiful bonds formed in the body of Christ that come through the Spirit of God. They are bonds of love, bonds created by the Holy Spirit. Living with them is one of the joys of being a Christian! “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).
Sadly, there are unholy bonds as well. Scripture warns against those. For example, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14). So a believer and unbeliever should not marry (though Scripture says if you already are, this is not reason to divorce).
Another example of an unholy bond would be sexual relations with people we are not married to: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6:15–16).
There is some debate and misunderstanding about whether or not Scripture teaches about “soul ties.” Let’s try and clear that up. However you want to describe it, the Bible clearly teaches that there are holy and unholy bonds between people. Adam and Eve had a holy bond; they became one. (Clearly this goes way beyond “flesh,” as any married couple can tell you, especially those married for many years. The bond is at a soul level as well as physical.) Jonathan and David had a very special bond: “After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself” (1 Sam. 18:1). The King James Version translates it this way: “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David.” So, bonds between people can clearly be formed.
When Paul warns about being “yoked” with unbelievers, he is describing an unholy bond. When he warns believers not to have sexual relations outside of marriage, he warns against uniting with that person—clearly a type of bond, an unholy bond. But unholy bonds take place outside of sexual relations. You’ve seen relationships where one woman (or man) holds too much sway over another. The friend and her mother I mentioned in chapter 5 are a good example of an unholy bond; her mother has control over her, and my dear friend has felt powerless to break that bond.
When a mother exerts control over her grown children, there is an illegitimate domination. That is an ungodly soul tie. When a friend controls another through moods or threats (unspoken or spoken), there is an ungodly soul tie present. Given our vulnerability as women, given our deep capacity for relationship, we must be aware of the power of unholy ties.
When someone is worrying about you, angry with you, or judging you, when those emotions cause that person to obsess over you, hold conversations with you when you aren’t even present, that creates an unholy bond. This is clearly not the bond of love by the Holy Spirit that Paul says is good; this is an unhealthy bond. These forms of unhealthy ties create all sorts of havoc. They form a kind of spiritual walkway over which another person’s warfare travels to you. The negative emotions, demonic strongholds, or accusing spirits that have been accosting them come over and accost you. The soul tie is a two-way street, by the way, so what you are struggling with goes over to them as well.
My mom and I had a massive soul tie. It was more than a walkway; we had the Brooklyn Bridge. After speaking on the phone with my mother, I would often feel overwhelmed, diminished, and even angry. Slowly, I realized (or my husband would point out to me) that what I was feeling (and hadn’t been feeling prior to the phone call) was exactly what my mother felt. She was often overwhelmed, diminished, and angry … and only too happy that I would share this with her. But these weren’t my feelings at all! I needed to break the soul tie with my mom.
Many years ago, John and I were intervening passionately in a friend’s life. His world was crashing down. We both spent many hours counseling him and praying for him and his family. After a couple of weeks, what I can only describe as a darkness, a heaviness, and a weight of despair fell on our household. It was new, strong, and awful. That is when we began to learn about soul ties. We had been fighting for our friend, contending in the spiritual realm on his behalf—but in our own strength. We had formed a soul tie, and all the warfare and heaviness that he was struggling under came barreling into our home.
With some people it feels as if they are sucking the life out of you. That is because they are sucking the life out of you. There is an ungodly tie there. You need to break it.
Galatians 6:14 declares that through the cross of Christ, “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The cross changes every relationship. Even family ties. “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37–38 NIV 2011). All ties are subject now to the rule of Christ. And so we can say, in a very godly and healthy way, “I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me. I am crucified to my mom, to my sister, to my friend, and to my enemy, and they are crucified to me.”
The only bond we are urged to maintain is the bond of love by the Holy Spirit. All others—well, it’s time to break them. You won’t believe how free you can be and how good you can feel!
It is very important to note that breaking a soul tie with a person is not the same thing as rejecting the person. It is actually the loving thing to do. You don’t want them obsessing about you, and you don’t want to be obsessing about them. You don’t want them controlling you, and you don’t want to be controlling them. You do not want any further conversations with them when they aren’t even there, and you don’t want them doing this with you. You certainly don’t want their warfare, and they don’t want yours.2
This simple prayer will help:
By the cross of Jesus Christ I now sever all soul ties with [name them] in the Name of Jesus Christ. I am crucified to her, and she is crucified to me. I bring the cross of Christ between us, and I bring the love of Christ between us. I send [name them]’s spirit back to her body, and I forbid her warfare to transfer to me or to my domain. I command my spirit back into the Spirit of Jesus Christ in my body. I release [name them] to you, Jesus. I entrust her to you. Bless her, God! In Jesus’s Name. Amen.
treasure the gift
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The deepest desire of every human being’s heart is to be loved. To be loved in the face of our flaws and failings is a taste of heaven. In heaven we will “know even as we are known” (1 Cor. 13:12, author’s paraphrase). We will be completely transformed into the image of Christ, beholding him as he truly is, and we will finally and fully be who we truly are. God knows us inside and out. Right now. In heaven we will know him. And we will know others and be known by them perfectly as well. Not only known but enjoyed. Embraced. Understood. Celebrated. Loved. What a thought.
And what an extraordinary gift it is on this side of paradise to be known and enjoyed here. Friendship is meant to offer us that.
I have prayed for friends. I have sought them out and pursued them. At times I have been desperate for them. But the best ones have come to me as a surprise, unexpected answers to prayers I had forgotten I’d prayed. Friends are gifts to us straight from the heart of God to our own, and no one is better at giving perfect gifts than he is.
They come to us all sorts of ways, these treasures. One I met while our children played at a park and I helped her dig through the sand to find her son’s precious lost toy. One sat next to me at church one morning, both of us holding our infant sons, reluctant to relinquish them to the nursery. One came to me through an introduction at a party followed by a shy invitation to meet over coffee. And one came through a request for help.
My friend Jill had moved across the country and sent out an email pleading for help to all she knew who remained in the city she had just left. A dear friend of hers, a spiritual mother, was being evicted from her apartment. She was ill, handicapped, poor, helpless—surely she would freeze to death that very night if no one rallied to her aid.
I knew the urgency was not feigned but also not completely true. Still, in this instance, I had the ability to respond. And in coming to the aid of a stranger in need, I received an unlooked-for jewel from God.
That’s what women friends are. They are gems to be treasured. Women friends lend each other their clothes, their recipes, their courage, their ideas, their faith, and their hope. Oh, to be loved and seen and encouraged to continue to sing one’s song, offer one’s true heart! How blessed I am to live surrounded by women of varying ages, backgrounds, and interests who share the same heartbeat of desire for Jesus!
How happy I was the other day to listen to a voice message from a dear one who didn’t speak but merely sang to me, “I just called to say I love you.…” At the sound of her voice, joyful and whimsical, encouragement lightened my weighed-down heart. Hooray for voice and text messages! Hooray for telephones!
My friend Rosetta was all for hearing about the daily activities of my life. I had called her from a stop light to check in. I was busy inside and out, driving to and fro on a stream of errands. I was tired and not happy about it. I called Rose in the middle of my lists to say hello but also to complain a little. She didn’t let me. Not even a little bit. Instead, she spoke words of loving conviction. “How wonderful that you can get out! How great that you have such a full life! Oh, to be able to walk!” Rosetta’s life isn’t full with running errands or with running of any kind. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t walk. Living in a wheelchair, Rose didn’t get out much. But she had so much life exuding out of her spirit that sometimes, to my embarrassment, I would forget.
Her words, the words of a friend who knew and loved me, reframed my moment and opened my eyes. Friends do that for one another.
Rosetta spent many of her days looking out the window in her tiny apartment, watching the activity of others more physically able. Her little view of the world was a window of grace, and she invited me to see my life through it. In her company my priorities ordered themselves up correctly. She taught me that love sees with a thankful heart. The simple moments that I, too, often take for granted are the very pearls that join together and make a beautiful life, but only when strung together with thankfulness, linked with grace, shared with an open hand.
Last Friday night Rosetta and I enjoyed an unhurried conversation. Both sitting in our respective chairs, we spoke of thoughtful things: hope, suffering, the mysterious ways of our God. She cried in saying good-bye. I didn’t know it would be our last. Come Sunday morning, Rosetta was running. She is free and healed and happy and seeing face-to-face the One who has won her heart. I already miss her. I am going to continue to miss her. But only for a little while. And while I do, I pray I continue to see my life through a window of grace and, in loving friendships, invite others to share the view.
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