Everyone Needs Friends

I had already started drafting this post when I turned to my youngest two sisters for blogging inspiration asking, “what wisdom did I try to cram down your throats when you were kids?” They reminded me of my infamous ‘everyone needs friends’ rant, which seemed to collide so nicely with the thoughts that were already swimming in my head.  

When Rachel and Bekah were just beautiful babies and I was trying to Mom them real hard, I would go to the ‘every-one needs friends’ rant over and over and over again. The rant stemmed from me  learning at an early age how important it is to be kind and fight against being a bully, because everyone needs a friend who encourages them to be their true selves... cool kids and band kids alike.  Everyone needs friends.  Everyone.

The best visuals I have for what this looks like in action are my memories from high school and my annual light-saber fights.  One night a year I invited people across the social spectrum to come to my house to hang out with my sisters and play with expensive light-up toys in my front yard, encouraging them to be whatever they wanted to be.  This kind of teaching moment, I am sure, is indirectly why my beautiful tatted up, concert tee wearing youngest sister became Prom Queen and seems to have such a wide variety of friends (sometimes she listens to me!).

What a babe.

Everyone needs friends, specifically ones who know you and accept you for exactly who you are. The Bible shows us that Jesus valued that brand of friend, too.

One day he (Jesus) was walking with his friends and asked them what his reputation was in the community and among the religious people.  They told him a list of things people claimed he was and, to be honest, they weren’t super negative descriptions.  In fact they compared him to some really esteemed prophets; however, they didn’t really hit on who Jesus was or why he was important.  Then Jesus turned to his friends, the ones who spent all of their time with him and who believed in him the most and he asked them who he was.

Jesus, I am sure, always knew exactly who he was, why he came to Earth, and why he was important.  We don’t always have that stuff figured out for ourselves though, do we?

Lately I’ve been hyper aware that I sure don’t.  

If you asked me to describe myself to you, I would tell you that I love Jesus and from there would likely go on to tell you about all of my involvement in local ministries, my recent trips to Haiti, and about all of the kids I am lucky enough to get to hang out with on the regular.  

The sad thing is, most days lately that feels like “it.”  The more I realize I am getting my value from the lines in my planner dedicated to service to others, the less satisfied I am with the way that I’ve been living.  I know that Jesus doesn’t define me that way, and I don’t really want myself or other people to either.

Thank God for friends.  

While I haven’t held a light saber for years, I still have the kind of friends who encourage me to be my weird, frequently misunderstood (even by myself) self-- and celebrate how completely me I am.  In the middle of my recent “who even the heck am I?!” crisis, I realized God-- who is, by definition, love-- gave me so many people who sound off bits and pieces of who God says I am.

Feeling inspired by Jesus’s bluntness, I sent notes to twelve people who show me God’s love and complete acceptance daily and asked each of them, “who do you say that I am?”  The sum of the 5 notes returned to me so far have helped to paint a rainbow of snapshots of myself (none of which read like a resume), each one serving as commentary from the people I love about the picture they see God creating with me.  [And each one bringing me to tears].

 Who am I?  One loved girl who can be pretty good at loving people.  With the help of my people, I'm starting to remember that’s enough.