21

Wanna Enrich Your Life? Swap Insights with Your Friends

I’M ALWAYS TRYING TO TALK MY FRIENDS INTO THINGS.

Take this week for example. I’ve tried to talk a half dozen women into taking this class with me. It’s an eight-week class and it’s very reasonably priced and we’d be having fun and getting great exercise as well. What more could you ask for?

I just don’t understand why I’m not getting any takers. I thought EVERYBODY harbored a secret wish to take bellydancing lessons. I just don’t get the reticence.

Maybe it’s the Armenian blood in me. Either that or I spent too many hours as a kid watching I Dream of Jeannie.

No, wait, I bet I know what influenced me. No doubt it was that awesome photo of Liz Curtis Higgs in a veil and two pounds of eyeliner on the cover of her excellent book Bad Girls of the Bible. (There’s no way you can convince me there’s not a navel ring hiding beneath all those layers of silk!)

Be that as it may, so far my friends don’t share my enthusiasm about the lessons. But I’ll be sure to keep you informed.

The point is, my friends and I are always swapping ideas on how to make our lives more interesting or productive or healthy. Okay, so I’ll admit the bellydancing brainstorm might have been a little over the top. Normally our ideas are much more mainstream.

Like the way we’re always swapping diet strategies and newsflashes. Last week, for example, I got a phone call from a friend of mine. She sounded positively manic as she squealed, “You’ll never guess what happened last night!”

I wondered if she had won the lottery. I was getting ready to ask her to pay for my bellydancing lessons when she said, “I got into my blue jeans!”

She hasn’t worn blue jeans in a year. But after dieting and exercising for several weeks, she got those denims zipped.

I understand the significance of her news. I’ve fought the battle of the bulge myself. The truth is, winning the lottery pales in comparison to getting back into a favorite pair of jeans after a cellulite-induced exile.

We also encourage each other when it comes to beauty secrets.

And, boy, do we need those beauty secrets. Can anyone explain to me why, as we get older, our eyebrows, lips, hair and bones get thinner while our waistlines continue to thicken? It hardly seems fair.

Not to mention what happens to our eyelids. Last week my friend Beth lamented, “It’s getting harder to put on eyeliner. My eyelids are too wrinkly.”

I know what she’s talking about. It’s not easy getting liner up and down both sides of all those tiny wrinkles.

Half the time my eyelids sport a dotted line.

I have good news on the hair removal front, though. Several chapters ago I confessed that I had an appointment for electrolysis to remove a dozen stubborn chin hairs. I’ve had more than one reader write and ask me how it went. Here’s the report: I love the results! You’ll be glad to know that my chin stubble days are behind me. I no longer look like Michael W. Smith, which is thrilling to me although my fourteen-year-old daughter says she misses snickering at my rendition of “Rocketown.”

Electrolysis tip: Take a Walkman and listen to your favorite music as your hair follicles are getting zapped. And turn the beat up loud—with enough decibels it’s possible to drown out some of the pain. (But not too loud. Your electrologist will be determining the voltage via a foot pedal. You do NOT want her tapping her toes to the beat. Trust me on this.)

And when my friends and I aren’t trading health and beauty secrets, we can often be found talking about the relationships in our lives. We ask each other questions like these . . .

How can I teach my kids to be more respectful? How can I forgive my husband? How can I encourage a friend who’s going through a tough time? I’m lonely—how can I create more meaningful bonds with people around me? How can I get rid of the anger I feel toward my ex? How can I get my kids to be more responsible? Do I criticize my husband too much? If so, how can I build him up instead? How can I set boundaries at work? How can I get along better with my parents?

From there the categories get even broader. The Bible says God forgives me for my past mistakes—why can’t I seem to forgive myself? How can I stay consistent in God’s Word? Why do I have a hard time believing that Jesus loves me? How can I experience more power in my prayer life? I’m struggling with lust or envy or bitterness—any suggestions how I can win this battle? How can I get a handle on my depression? I can’t seem to trust God about my situation—how can I learn to trust him more?

I love having these kinds of conversations with my friends. And if you’re not broaching these kinds of topics with godly girlfriends in your life, maybe you should give it a try.

I find that my friends are a wealth of practical information. No one friend has all the answers, but between them all I’ve gathered useful insights on everything from fixing my cat to fixing my marriage, from bleaching my teeth to harnessing my tongue, from balancing my checkbook to balancing my life.

And what’s really great is that you and I can have these kinds of intimate, encouraging conversations with our friends any time, anywhere. We don’t have to make a formal appointment! We can encourage each other over coffee at our kitchen tables, via cell phones as we commute home from work, or side by side as we browse garage sales or watch our kids play softball.

In fact, I was sort of hoping Thursday nights would provide an opportunity for these kinds of conversations with my friends as we drove to our bellydancing classes.

If that sounds like fun to you, give me a call.

As of this moment, there’s still plenty of room in the car.