Letters to Little: Two Enemies of Friendship

My sweet Sammy –

I dropped you off at “school” today for the second morning in a row. This morning we were on time! Yesterday the church receptionist may have scolded us for being late and I may have unknowingly picked you up during nap time, earning us another scolding look. The good news is that you’re so cute no one holds your crazy mama against you J Your teacher put you on a play mat while I signed you in and you immediately started babbling to all the toys – I’m so glad that you are liking school. It makes it so much easier for me to drop you off. I hope you know that I miss you and I’m so happy to see your smiley little snuggly self when I pick you up! I am excited for the day when I pick you up and you tell me about the friends that you made.

Friendships may be one of the most rewarding things in your life – as CS Lewis (a very brilliant man) wrote in one of his books:

“I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” – The Four Loves

 There are many bible verses about friendship as well – while a good many of them are found in Proverbs (an Old Testament book written by very wise men), Jesus talks about friendship in the Gospels and his disciples and followers talk about friendship in the New Testament as well. They teach us about the benefits of friendship, they warn us to steer clear from investing in certain types of friends, and they instruct us on how to be good, safe friends to others. Some of the most beautiful verses on friendship are actually statements made by Jesus that tell us about our identity in Him. He doesn’t call us slave, or servant, but friends. He invites us into relationship with Him and His Father; into relationship with the Trinity. It’s a friendship in which we can have complete unity with the Trinity; where we can be fully known and know God Himself as Jesus does.

There are a few things I hope you learn early on in your life.  I hope you learn them much more quickly than I have in mine, but I also hope that you are a continual learner and a humble teacher to others. One of the things I hope you learn early is that friendship is a gift and a blessing.  It is not a duty that you feel forced into, it is something that you choose to participate in. I say this because there are two great enemies of healthy friendships – there are more, but I think these two are pretty foundational to all the other problems we experience in relationships. If we are going to experience healthy friendships that are life giving, then we must guard against these two enemies that can both prevent us from being a good friend and hinder our friendships from healthy, life-giving growth.

At the core of all of our sins or shortcomings is pride. It’s that ugly thing that rears its head and says that we are better, stronger, wiser, more capable than God. Pride says, “I am going to do things this way, because I think it’s better than doing what God has told me to do.” Or “I am going to live this way, because I don’t think that God really knows what He’s talking about in this situation.” Etc.  Pride often looks like us taking our own lives under control, believing that we can do a better job at being god than God Himself. This trickles down into fueling selfishness, greed, and a myriad of other struggles that hinder us from being the friends that Jesus has called us to be. It trickles down into two specific enemies that will sabotage healthy relationships in our lives if we are not careful to guard against them: Insecurity and Victim Mentality.

Insecurity is something that everyone struggles with on some level. It’s that feeling of being slightly uncomfortable in your own skin, of questioning yourself and wondering if you’ve got what it takes, if you’re enough, etc. Insecurity often looks at the world around you and goes – “Man, they seem to have it all together and I don’t – not even close! I’m not as ______ as they are. I’m not enough as I am to be _________.”  Insecurity leaves you looking to others for your identity and constantly adapting who you are, what you are interested in, and how you act in relationships just to be accepted. Insecurity enslaves you into this trap of perfectionism, fueling this false belief that if you can just be better, funnier, smarter, or _______ than you’ll finally be worthy of acceptance, love, and secure friendships. What insecurity does not tell you is that it’s like the wheel in a hamster’s cage. Hamster’s love jumping on the wheel and running for exercise, but they never go anywhere and they can’t easily stop once they start running without getting tripped up. When we allow the lies that insecurity whispers in our ears to take root in our heart and drive our actions and beliefs, we will constantly be striving to reach a destination which the wheel will not take us. It is a vicious, never-ending, energy-expending pursuit to find security because it is based on the whims of fickle humans. The truth is, secure friendships are never built on the foundation of insecurity.

The other enemy is a victim mentality. It often stems from debilitating insecurity, but it is most definitely rooted in pride. Victim mentality is an insidious belief that you are the product, the victim, of your circumstances and that you don’t hold any personal responsibility for your actions or beliefs. It closes the door to any chance of constructive criticism and any hope of genuine restoration in your relationships because everything is always the other person’s fault. When you are a constant victim, no one can win with you unless they are telling you everything you want to hear, doing everything they want to do, and often it is still not enough for you to be pleased with your friends. When you are friends with a constant victim, your feelings are never valued or validated, you cannot be honest without dramatic conflict, and you will never win or please them. A victim mentality enslaves you in the loneliest of prisons, leaving you by yourself with festering wounds of bitterness and unforgiveness. Where insecurity leaves you striving and changing to earn acceptance, a victim mentality will leave you hardened and unyielding to change. Rather, it will demand that the world around you change, cater to your every sensitivity and proclivity, and practically demonize it when it doesn’t meet your expectations. It whispers lies such as, “They just don’t understand me. They don’t love me. If I can just find someone who understands me…” that take root in our hearts that will eventually burden and suffocate every friendship, further fueling the identity of “victim.” The truth is, understanding and healthy friendships can never be present where victim mentality is allowed to exist.

Insecurity and victim-mentality fuel self-absorption and distrust. You become so focused on yourself – whether or not you are accepted, how you need to adapt, or your own need to be understood and remain unhurt that you have no room to focus on others. It creates this self-fulfilling prophecy in which your fear of rejection or of hurt actually comes to pass because you never allow yourself to be your true self or open to personal growth.  Often we mask who we are for fear of rejection, but that only means that the friendships we do have are ones rooted in rejection – the worst kind of rejection – the kind in which you reject yourself. Not only does it fuel self-absorption, but it also fuels distrust. You’ll never fully trust that you are accepted, you’ll never fully trust that the other party is safe with your heart, you’ll never fully trust that you loved as you are. When we don’t trust, we close ourselves off as a form of protection. This creates a wall that will inevitably create distance in the relationship, and distance that continues to grow will eventually be the death of a healthy friendship which will feel like rejection.  So the very thing we feared – rejection – will be the very thing we experience when we allow insecurity and a victim mentality to take root in our friendships and relationships.

At some point in your life you will struggle with both of these issues. It won’t always look the same, but in some form or fashion we will all struggle with insecurity and a victim mentality for the course of our lives. Why? Because we were wired for relationship and community, but in our sinfulness we’ve skewed that design. We look to each other for our identity rather than our Creator, and it’s easier to scapegoat our shortcomings than stare at our broken mess of humanity and own it, admitting that we aren’t perfect and that we are in need. We dislike being in positions of being in need, because it forces dependence on and surrender to something or someone greater than us – and that feels like slavery. The reality is that we are all slaves to something or someone – we will be for our entire lives. Want to know who has mastery over you? It is whatever or whomever you give authority. When we choose “independence” – we’re really choosing to be enslaved to our broken attempts to control our lives, and that is ultimately choosing to be enslaved to others because they decide if we’re ________ enough. When we choose to surrender and depend on Jesus, we’re really choosing the opportunity to walk in freedom. It’s an incredibly freeing thing to own our mess, leave it at the cross, and walk in the truth of who we are in Christ. Choosing anything else will leave us running from or wallowing in our brokenness – and that will prevent the growth of anything whole and life-giving in our lives.

You will never be able to rescue someone from insecurity or a victim-mentality; that will always come from them allowing God to work on their hearts. However, you can guard against insecurity and a victim-mentality in your own heart.  If you want to have safe and healthy friendships it will require you to not only confront your own brokenness, but also lovingly confront the brokenness of others. It will require that you daily, sometimes moment by moment, take your insecurities and your hurts before God’s throne, own them, and then surrender them and allow His truth to reign over you and your relationships. It will require that you walk in humility, remain open to the constructive and loving criticisms of others, listen and take what they have to say before God’s throne, hold it up in the light of His Word, and walk in obedience to Him. It will require that you walk in courage, love another more than yourself, walk in integrity, and sometimes that you know when to lovingly walk away from an unhealthy friend for a season. It will require that you walk in Divine wisdom, leaning heavily on the Spirit to guide you and work in you and through you, so that you know how to build and invest in these friendships in such a way that reveal the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth…because the world needs to see the beauty and the hope of the Gospel in our friendships and relationships.

My prayer for you is that you would see your Dad and I model friendship well, not perfectly, for you as you grow up, and that you would experience relationship with the greatest Friend, Jesus.

All of my love,

Mom 

Giving Aunt Kaelin a sympathetic face when she had to go to the doctor (I think you were remembering your 2 month shots!). 

Insisting that you sit up "on your own" while watching football with Daddy and I. 

Bright eyed and wide awake at bedtime - too bad you do not look this alert in the mornings :)

 

Letters to Little: the House of Friendship

My sweet Samuel,

You are racked out (finally) for your afternoon nap at the moment. You must be dreaming about something lovely as you smile in your sleep – could you be any cuter?

One of my hopes for you is that you have some pretty epic friends throughout the course of your life. While I’m sure that friends will come in and out of your life as seasons change, some will remain fast and steady presences in your life. I pray these lifelong buddies love Jesus, speak life to you and over you, and are a safe place in which you can be yourself.

Not every friend you make will be one of these close buddies, and that’s okay! Your heart is precious and it should be guarded wisely – which means, that not everyone will honor your heart and cherish it. It’s never healthy to be completely closed off to relationships, nor is it healthy to swing wide the doors of your heart’s most vulnerable places to everyone. There has to be a balance, and I’m confident that you will find that balance and walk well in it with divine wisdom – this is my prayer for you.  As you grow, remember that your relationships are like inviting someone into your life, much like you would invite someone into your house.

We spend a lot of time on our front porch – you LOVE the porch swing your Daddy made for me and you LOVE being outside – it’s the only place that calms you when you become inconsolable. Neighbors will drive by and wave, occasionally some will be walking and stop by to say hello. They’ll chat for a while with us, ask how old you are, and say hello to Moe puppy (whether they wanted to or not, she’s still learning personal space), but they never come inside.  We know very little about the depth of their personal lives, but we look out for one another. These are “front porch” people – and you will have a lot of “front porch” people in your life. Neighbors, acquaintances, mutual friends, coworkers, or folks you just met will generally be “front porch” people – nearly everyone starts out as a “front porch” friend before they move into the living room.

“Living room” friends have been invited into your “home” so to speak, but not too far into it. They’re often “front porch” people that you have a bit more in common with. Friends on your soccer team or in your class at school – they’ll know you a bit more but not super close. You may have a lot of “living room” friends, especially if you play sports or participate in extracurricular activities. These are great friends to have, too! You may not know them super well, but there’s a lot of encouragement to be found in these friendships. There’s also a lot of heartache that can be experienced in these friendships. These are often your peers – you care more about their acceptance of you than the “front porch” friends. You spend more time with them, they’ve seen a bit more of who you are, and when they hurt you it stings a bit more. When a “front porch” person hurts you, it’s generally unintentional because they don’t know you well enough to offend you intentionally. When a “living room” friend says something hurtful, it is still likely unintentional, but it can also be more specifically tailored to something you value or are insecure about. You’ll learn how to navigate conflict and build deeper friendships from these “living room” friends – they’ll go from “porch friend” status to sitting back in the deep couch and playing video games and taking their shoes off OR they’ll never get comfortable enough and stay more in the front porch zone…which is okay. “Living room” friends who do get comfortable enough to take off their shoes, sit back and relax will sometimes stay there, but some will move into the kitchen.

“Kitchen friends” are fewer in number and closer to you than your “living room” friends. They’re the friends who you’ll invite over to play, eat dinner, or spend the night. They’ll be the friends in your class or on your soccer team or in your small group (when you’re older) that you’ve bonded with more closely. You’ll learn quickly that we spend a lot of time in our kitchen (which is also extended into our den). It’s much more of a mess than the front living room and it’s the room in our house in which we frequently connect with one another as we cook dinner, greet your dad when he comes home from work, and catch up with good friends over a glass of coffee or wine (or boobie milk for you).  In our kitchen is our back door – and it is used frequently by our close friends, like Aunt Lizan and Andrea. These friends rarely knock (unless the door is locked), but they’re welcome anytime.  These friends know us well – they’ve seen both our dirty dishes and laundry piled up on the couch. They’ve seen us burn dinner and argue with one another. They recognize when we’re having a hard day and are quick to offer to pray for us. They have sent us encouraging texts, brought us dinner on hard days, and love babysitting you! These friends are generally your community – not only do you continue to learn how to resolve conflict, but you also learn how to better communicate that much more.  None of us are perfect, and in every relationship or friendship we will have disagreements, hurts, and wounds.  These friendships will be worth fighting for, they’ll challenge you to grow and become the man God has called you to be. These friendships will offer perspective, challenge your thoughts and opinions, and help you learn how to identify and utilize your strengths and gifts within your community. Most of your “kitchen” friends will remain around the table (or on the couch in our current layout), but some will make themselves at home further by entering into the pantry.

“Pantry” friends are friends that absolutely make themselves at home – these will be your closest and most likely lifelong friends. You may only have 1-2 of these friends. These are friends that open up the cabinets in your home and help themselves to snacks – or in your mother’s case, they know where my stash of chocolate is hidden and how to locate the ice cream. These friends don’t just know that you’re having a rough time, they know the specifics of why and what you’re struggling with. They know how disorganized your cabinets are, and that you keep junk food in those cabinets that are tucked away on the top row even though you keep all the healthy food in the front of the fridge. They hold you accountable, they cry with you (you can still be a manly man and shed some tears), they get angry with you, they love you. These are friends that know you so well they’re practically family. They’re the ones you want to take on vacation with you, the ones who know all of your embarrassing moments and have no problem laughing about them. These are the people who laugh WITH you, but not AT you in a denigrating way. These are the people who can call you out on your BS but do so in such a way where you know, even when it stings, that they love you tremendously. These are the friends that you are vulnerable with – they know the real Sam and they love you all the same. These are not perfect friends, but they are pretty epic. You’ll learn tremendous grace in these friendships – when you have absolutely blown it, because you will at some point, these friends won’t abandon you. You’ll learn all about sanctification in these friendships as you learn to both speak and receive the truth in love. You’ll learn that confrontation doesn’t always have to lead to conflict in these friendships, and that there is tremendous freedom when you can be accepted for who you are and not what you bring to the table.

One friend will go beyond a “pantry” friend one day and see the most intimate parts of who you are when they move into your bedroom as your wife. I know, cue the “ewww gross Mom!”  I’m praying for all of your friendships, but I’m really praying for this one. Your friendship with your wife will be the most important friendship you ever invest in. You will continue to have to invest in this friendship if you want to have a healthy marriage. She will know you more than anyone else, and I hope above all else that she is safe with your heart. You will know her more than anyone else, and you’ll learn more about the Gospel and God’s love for you in this friendship and in your friendship with Jesus than in any other friend group. More than anyone else, she will push you closer to Jesus and into a deeper dependence upon Him as you learn how to lead, love, and serve her as Jesus leads, loves and serves the Church.  You will both know each other so well, that when you fight you’ll be tempted to hit below the belt sometimes – you’ll know how to deliver a swift punch to the gut, one that will deliver the most damage with the least amount of effort – but my prayer for you both is that you never take that shot. Rather, you guard one another, inspire growth in one another, and always keep the only perfect Friend (Jesus) in the center of your marriage.

Finally, the greatest friend you will ever have – and the only perfect friendship – is the friendship you’ll have with Jesus. Jesus built your house – He knows you better than you know you – so there is no point in hiding your dirty laundry or junk food, or pretending you don’t have cobwebs or skeletons in your closet. He knows you fully and loves you unconditionally. When you feel like you have no one else, when no one understands, Jesus stands with you – always present with you, regardless of your feelings, and He is able to sympathize with your every weakness because He too has been tempted, rejected, hurt, disappointed, excited, angry, loved, sad – you name it, He has experienced it without sinning (Hebrews 4:15). So when your friends hurt you, or when you feel alone, I hope you find in Jesus a steadfast friend.

I hope you never buy into the lie that you are not enough, or that your worth is dependent upon the opinions or acceptance of others. I hope you never bend to peer pressure and feel the need to compromise your convictions in order to gain “friends” – who will not be true friends at all. I hope that you are a good friend – from the people you see in passing, to your spouse, to everyone in between – I pray that you are a man who stands firm in his convictions and yet remains a warm and safe place for people in which they can find rest, grace, and love. In a world that preaches tolerance, I hope that you never “tolerate” others but love them as Christ has called us to love one another.

I also hope that you keep your Dad and I in at least kitchen friend status throughout your life – don’t kick us to the curb as a teenager ok? We’re for you, even when you think we’re old and out of touch J

All my love,

Mom 

Letters to Little: A Series on Friendship

My Saturday mornings – truthfully all of my mornings – look much differently now that I’m a mom. Gone are the days where sleeping in was an option, going for a run in the stillness of the morning was possible, or sitting at our farmhouse table with my Bible and journal for an unlimited amount of time.  Sleeping in is now making it to 6 or 7am. Going for a run now involves breastfeeding a baby, getting a stroller, dog, baby and myself out the door before it gets unbearably hot, and “running” quickly turns into walking because I inevitably wet my pants when I try to run. **Do your Kegels ladies, do your kegels!** I still get the gift of sitting down to write over coffee every now and then, like this morning. It isn’t as quiet, but it is just as beautiful.

This morning Sammy is playing on his mat. He’s starting to learn that his hand is connected to his body – and that he can hit things with it. He is no longer punching himself in the face and looking surprised. He still looks surprised when he connects his fist to the toys hanging over him, but he loves the sounds they make and keeps swinging. Mittens cover his little hands (because he keeps scratching his face) making him look like a little boxer. He’s worn himself out and is fighting falling asleep, which is adorable until he starts to cry. He’s rocking a new onesie from his Aunt Kaelin. On the front in bold font reads “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.” Yes you are. I think to myself as I pick him up, settle him down into his sleeper and rock him with my foot as I sit back down to my computer.

I think about his sweet self and how he’s becoming more expressive of his personality. I am so excited to learn who he is and how he processes and connects with the world around him. I pray about the kind of man he will one day be, and I hope that he will make choices in divine wisdom and not out of his own logic all the days of his life. In my heart of hearts, I want him to keep the innocence and faith of a child for as long as possible – I want him to look at the world much like he does now, with a sense of wonder and curiosity. I don’t want him to remain in a place of immaturity – I want him to grow – but in a world where so many kids have to become adults much sooner than they ever should, I want so badly for my son to have a joyful childhood.  A deep part of my mother’s heart wants for him to have ridiculously awesome, Christ-centered, honest and loving friendships in which he can be himself without fear.

This week has reminded me of how important friendship is – how much we value friendship and meaningful connection as human beings. It isn’t vital to survival, but I do believe that we were wired for relationship. While there is a void in the core of who we are that can only be completely satisfied by God Himself, I think there’s a deep longing in the human soul to be seen, genuinely seen, and to be loved in that exposure by others. How we interact within friendship reveals so much about who we are, what we fear, and where our hope lies. How we handle hurts and conflict within those friendships says that much more.

I think about a dear friend of mine who had a challenging week in the world of friendship. She is one of the most passionate, warm, loving, and animated women I know, and yet this week she believed the lie that there was something wrong with the friendship she had to offer others. I witnessed a woman who has so much to offer believe that she had nothing valuable to give – and while I wanted to be quick to encourage her with truth, I had to check in with myself for a moment. I, too, have felt and believed the exact same lies.  

I think about the wedding shower that is being hosted at my house this afternoon – how I have a thousand things left to do before guests begin to arrive – and how I had to remind my very stressed out self this morning that this shower is about a dear friend and her upcoming marriage. It’s not about how clean my house is, how cute the decorations are, how tasty the food is or how Pinteresty it looks. It’s not about keeping Moe’s hair off the newly cleaned furniture, or if the nursery looks pristine, or even if my cluttered desk in the kitchen is organized…it’s not about what my friends think of me when they are guests in my home. It’s about celebrating an upcoming marriage – the picture God gives the world to say, “This is what the Gospel is like…This is what My love for you is like..” I know that. I’ve known it all along, and yet this fear of man creeps in so very slyly.

This belief that I have to live up to a certain set of expectations in order to be of any value, in order to be worth the pursuit or maintenance of a friendship, is one of the most detrimental weapons against a healthy relationship. When it is self-imposed, like mine has been this weekend, then it is a lie that must be quickly thwarted before the gracious throne of the Father in truth. It’s a heart issue, something that must be uprooted while truth is replanted in the soil of our souls – it cannot come from another’s constant validation but from believing God’s Word concerning our identity. However, when this mindset is imposed upon you by another – when who you are is never good enough – it’s another beast entirely.

It has taken me a very long time to begin to learn what really matters in a friendship – those things that separate a genuine friend from an unsafe one. I will forever be learning how to be humble and teachable within the context of friendships –how to handle conflict Biblically, how to fight courageously for unity and reconciliation, for peace and a safe place in which vulnerability can exist. I will forever be learning to let some friendships go as well – to step back, to grieve, and to choose healthy boundaries.

I may constantly battle the lies that come with the struggle of perfectionism and anxiety, especially in the context of friendship. However, I am so thankful for the core women God has placed in my life as intimate friends – those women that can call me out gently and call me up candidly. I’m thankful for the new friendships we are making as a family in this season of parenthood – for the mothers and older women whose wisdom has brought a sense of normalcy, hope and humor in these sleep-deprived, sometimes discouraging days. Most of all, I’m thankful for the friendship of Jesus – for the constant, open invitation to come before him with all that I’m carrying and take a break at His feet. Of all the friends that Samuel makes in his life, I hope he cherishes that perfect Friend above all.

I’ve never done a “series” of posts on a topic before, but I’ve been enjoying writing “Letters to Little” in my personal life and sharing a few here on the blog. The next few posts will be “letters” centered around friendship, so I hope you enjoy them!

all the love and crisp fall air from music city,

a

Sammy loves his friend Fox 

Game Day with his Aunt Lauren