Friendship is one of the greatest gifts. I tend to think it is one of the oldest gifts. It is also one of the widest framed relationships. Each of us experience it differently. Male, female, adult, child, and many more variables play into how and who we choose for our friends, how we maintain our relationships, as well as how closely we develop them. Before you go any further, think about your friends. I bet you have friends of all sorts. Some know the deepest places of your life; some are just for hanging out. Whatever shape and size they are probably not all consistent.
As I often do, my mind drifts to Jesus. To the kind of friendships that Jesus had in his adult life. We tend to call them disciples, but for Jesus they were the men who shared the most intimate parts of his life with him. He ate, drank, traveled, prayed, worked with them. Literally he did life with them. As friends do, they knew what the expressions on his face meant or his body language. And they were incredibly diverse in character.
So why am I writing about friends on a website that deals with healing and health? I think that friends or the lack of them is a key component of all aspects of health. We physically receive immeasurable value from their touch. We receive stress relief through the form of relaxation or laughter. The same is true for our emotions and mental health. We also have access to compassion. There is no less value for our spiritual health. Perhaps one of the key aspects of friends that we often overlook is that they provide for us fulfillment in areas of our lives that our spouse or significant other cannot or does not.
As a mentor, one of the first things I ask is about friendships. The questions are deeply personal. Here’s why. If you are going to overcome obstacles or make changes, you’re going to need help. The best kind of help comes through strong relationships in which we are held accountable with love and grace.
I speak to you from experience. I spent a percentage of my adult life discouraged from building friendships. Most days were difficult. Rarely if ever did I go out with friends. I was so grateful for my relationships in church. Additionally, for my large family. I battled depression. Eventually, it created such a deep-seated bitterness in me that it was life threatening. It also took me almost as many years to change those patterns after I was no longer in the relationship. Oddly enough, it shifted who I was from an extravert, to in many social settings, an introvert.
The reason for this is what I have spoken about before both in my podcast and my blog, we have the ability to alter our mind’s thought patterns. How we do that is just as important as with who’s help we do it. As you move forward you need to consider who has impact on your social life. Let me give you another personal example. Years ago, I experienced a very traumatic event in my life. I chose not to tell anyone about it. I just buried the event. If I didn’t think about it then it didn’t exist or impact me, right? Unfortunately, the exact opposite happens in these cases. Especially, with negative events. We don’t even realize it, but our thoughts begin to shift, the people we choose in our lives reflect our internal thoughts, ultimately our behaviors do as well.
The same is true as we begin to move towards healing. The people we surround ourselves with need to be strong in compassion, but gracious in truth telling. We have room for all of our friends, but just as I mentioned at the beginning, they each serve a unique purpose. So take stock, who are you going to depend for what?
Monica Swank 