{"id":40,"date":"2012-04-02T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/on-friendship\/"},"modified":"2018-04-21T17:22:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T17:22:22","slug":"on-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/on-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"On Friendship."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not easy putting it all out there, and Lord knows it\u2019s often better to stuff it all down and pretend like everything is fine.  But sometimes, maybe giving voice to an issue in your heart is the greatest medicine. If you know anything about me, you know that I had a tumultuous childhood.  A lot of moving, a lot of instability \u2013 and I know that my parents did the best they could \u2013 but I went to three different high schools \u2013 the last being when I was 17.  A junior.  When everyone had established their friendships and grown up together.  I was coming in at the end.  Thankfully college came soon after, and thank God for it because it was just transient enough that I had the opportunity to meet lots of different kinds of people.  I was no longer the outsider.  And really, that\u2019s what college was about for me \u2013 despite spending 90% of my time in the theatre building, I was blessed to have friendships of every kind, because everyone<\/em> was beginning again.  I still call some of those people my oldest and dearest friends.  And, if you really are blessed with those old friendships, you can pick right back up from where you left off.  As my dear friend and kindred spirit Michelle reminds me, we shouldn\u2019t be \u201chustling\u201d our relationships all the time.  At some point, we have to stop working so hard and just be ourselves and trust that those people we call friends really and truly do want to spend time with us. And I think she hit the nail on the head.  I wonder, if because I had such instability in my childhood and teenage years that I just don\u2019t feel like I deserve to have rich friendships with women.  Maybe, sub-consciously, my 14 year old self is telling me not to get too close.  Maybe it\u2019s an issue of self-protection?  I have an amazing husband who tells me every day what a gift I am to him.  I love that I live with my greatest fan, and whenever I need that pep talk he is more than ready to give it to me.  But I find when it comes to the topic of women friendships \u2013 it\u2019s just so much more complicated, isn\u2019t it? I\u2019m in the middle of reading Beth Moore\u2019s \u201cSo Long, Insecurity\u201d (HIGHLY recommend, by the way) and I highlighted one sentence in particular: \u201c[Rejection is] insecurity with a serious fever.\u201d Oooh.  Ever been there?  Have you ever fretted over something you\u2019ve said, or wrote, so much so that it kept you up at night?  Have you ever had too many drinks and wanted to call an old friend just to tell them you miss them more than they could possibly know, and then not remember what you said the next day, terrified you made a total fool out of yourself?  Have you ever \u201chustled\u201d a relationship?  Really and truly worked hard at getting someone to like you? Oh, friends.  I have done all of these things, many times. And Facebook?  You know where I\u2019m going with this \u2013 how many times have your feelings been hurt because you weren\u2019t invited\/weren\u2019t asked\/weren\u2019t approached\/weren\u2019t included?  I think we can all relate to that one. I feel like sometimes I mourn the fact I don\u2019t have that one \u201cgo-to\u201d friend \u2013 like just one person needs to fill all of those needs \u2013 because instead I have many different friends who fill all kinds of different roles in my life \u2013 and maybe I just need to recognize how wonderful that is in its own right.  Because who loves it when I\u2019m mired in defeat \u2013 convinced that no one really wants to spend time with me or feels I bring something fabulous to the party?  One guess. The devil rejoices in it.  He loves that I can\u2019t find my way out of this muck.  He relishes in those feelings of rejection and feeds them \u2013 gives them life, gives them a name.  James 1:16-18 says, \u201cDon\u2019t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters.  Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God the Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.  He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.  He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word.  And we, out of all creation, became His prized possession.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Oh, to truly and completely believe<\/em> this and live it out in my life!  To have freedom \u2013 to know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and that there is <\/em>someone who thinks I bring many, many<\/em> fabulous things to the party.  In fact, He thinks I\u2019m so<\/em> precious that He\u2019s planning<\/em> a party for me when it\u2019s my time to leave this world.  A royal soiree, given by the sovereign King.  Thrown for me<\/em>, His greatest and most beloved creation. Why, when I have such unbelievable power above me, am I still prey to such darkness?  I must know, deep inside, that this kind of decay is not of my Heavenly Father?  And so I will try to put this burden down each and every day.  When I\u2019m feeling lonely, or sad, or rejected \u2013 or simply unloved.  Because the TRUTH of my life is that all of those things are LIES.  And so I challenge all of you who struggle with similar feelings \u2013 you are not alone.  I\u2019m right there with you.  And the best thing that we can do is to recognize the lies and live in the truth of our great God\u2019s loving embrace.  Because He is Good.  He is Loving.  He will always have a place for you at His table. He is your greatest fan, and friend \u2013 if you\u2019ll let Him be. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not easy putting it all out there, and Lord knows it\u2019s often better to stuff it all down and pretend like everything is fine.  But sometimes, maybe giving voice to an issue in your heart is the greatest medicine. If you know anything about me, you know that I had a tumultuous childhood.  A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}