Growing up, I always struggled with friendships. Girls were
mean, catty, jealous, and disloyal. The circle of girls you referred to as
friends, were (majority of the time) far from the definition of a friend. This
in turn caused me to find friendships with guys, something I would still prefer
to this day but am unable to engage in because I am married and that just doesn’t
fly anymore. Some of the best friends I ever had however, were guys. Guys don’t
get wrapped up in the cattiness and drama that is girls. Though they too
struggle with insecurities, those insecurities don’t affect their relationships
the way they do for girls.
I began to surrender my life to Christ in high school, which is one heck of a
time to discover yourself in Christ and stand strong against the influences of
the world. Teens are so impressionable, so insecure and weak, and man is it a
lonely road. Standing in the middle of a public school, full of sex, parties,
drinking, and a whole heck of a lot of drama, it felt nearly impossible to
stand firm in what I believed to be true. However, I feel this would have been
far easier had I had a good support system apart from my family. I searched and
searched for friends that shared a heart for the Lord, but they were far and
few. I was stuck in the middle of the world around me and the world within
Christ. The kids at school didn’t really want to hang out with me because we
didn’t have anything in common. I wouldn’t drink, party, have sex, or doing anything
“fun” in their standards. But the kids in my youth group were closed to me
because in many ways I still resembled the world. Being a new Christian, I was
still blind to some of the things that I shouldn’t have been engaging in,
primarily the way I dressed. I had several people within my youth group speak
to me about their thoughts, (and the thoughts of others) in regards to my
clothes. Had it been done in love and without accusation, I may have responded
better. But it made me feel dirty and isolated. Knowing that kids in my youth
group, as well as parents apparently, made me sick and it hurt to know I was
being judged by the very people I was trying to trust. In school I was being
judged for looking and acting different, and in church the same was occurring
on the opposite end of the spectrum. I spent my sophomore year isolated
socially. I dealt privately with an eating disorder for over a year and a half.
However, that year and half was one of the most incredible times of spiritual
growth thus far in my life. I read, A LOT. And I grew to know and love the Lord
more with every minute I spent in His presence. I felt strong. However, the following
year proved my infancy in my faith and I fell hard. Again, much of this was
because I lacked a good support system, because I was so alone in my faith, and
I felt like such an outcast in both worlds. I caved and chose to follow the
world again, and the consequences are still reaping their dividends today.
I hoped that as an adult, this awful search for my place in
this world, my search for “good” friends would end, but I have found over the
years that it only gets worse. It’s different now, however. The insecurities
are different and the reactions to those insecurities are fairly different, but
the loneliness and hurt are still the same. The most genuine of women still fall under the
attacks of their insecurities and unknowingly cause a lot of heartache to those
they feel threatened by. God rescued me through my relationship with my
husband. We are so like-minded in our faith and in our passions, that it has
made the hole within my social life seem not so devastating. Being a mother has
forced me to grow significantly in my relationship with the Lord and in my
faith. Being a wife has done the same. Amazing authors have served as my “friends”
and spiritual encouragement despite the lack of those relationships in my physical
life. I constantly ask the question, “What’s wrong with me? Do I come off as
arrogant or unfriendly? Do people think I am fake? Am I offensive in ways that
I am unaware of?” Many times it has
caused me to shut down and shut in, but thankfully God never lets me stay there
long.
Over the years it has occurred to me that much of the problem, despite the fact
that we are all just incredibly busy, is a result of social media. Women are insecure
and it’s something that will carry on with us in a variety of ways throughout
the rest of our lives. Though we may react differently on the outside, we all
still suffer from the ugliness of becoming envious, jealous, and judgmental on
the inside. Facebook serves as a reminder of all those ugly insecurities, and
Satan loves to use it as a means to keep us self-doubting and discouraged. We
see these moms that seem to have it all together: clean homes, clean kids,
perfect jobs, organization, a solid faith, an amazing husband, etc..etc… We see
our friends getting big beautiful homes, buying nice cars, dressing up in cute
clothes, having the money and time to do their hair more than twice a year, all
while many of us are watching while we sit in our food stained yoga pants, with
our three day old messy buns, dark circles under our eyes, dirty homes that are
continually falling apart, and a car that yet again needs to go to the shop.
Our kids are crazy, our lives are chaotic, and we just can’t seem to get
anything right. Now, I am a mother so I can only speak from that perspective,
but this applies to women of all walks of life, just different issues. Not only
are we viewing these seemingly “perfect” lives, but we also have everyone and
their mother posting articles, blogs, and statuses expressing why this and that
are the best way to parent and take care of your child, and what YOU are doing
is wrong and as a result, you basically suck as a mother. Or at least, that’s
what we hear.
I was talking with my mom the other day and telling her my thoughts on this
subject. I told her I remember she and her friends, who were the mothers of my
friends, seemed to always have such a great friendship despite their
differences in styles of parenting and opinions on life and faith. To this day,
she is still great friends with most of those women. And here I am, struggling to
even find one friend like that. I told her I blame much of this issue on social
media. She and her friends didn't have that. They didn't have the ability to
share everything and anything under the son about themselves. They didn't share
every political, parental, and religious (or lack thereof) opinion that came to
their mind. As a result, their friendships were based simply on their
relationships with each other…based on their similar situations, their crazy
schedules and difficult days, and the pure enjoyment of one another’s company.
They shared stories and laughed over coffee, ignoring all of their differences
and just enjoying their walk through life together. They all had different
incomes, different sized homes, and different cars. And yet, they were
confident and comfortable enough in their friendships to see past those differences
and the insecurities they may have caused. I wonder if they would have been
friends (or still be friends) had they had access to social media at the time.
My point, because I promise there is one, is that we need to
see past ourselves, see past our insecurities and remember we are here for a
short time and we can’t waste any more of it feeling inadequate, defensive,
inferior, or discouraged. Moreover, many
of us need to step off of our pedestals of judgment and remember that we are
all struggling in life, struggling to balance it all, to know what’s best for
our families, to get back in shape, to feel good about ourselves, to simply press
on each day. For those of us that profess Christ, we need to remember why we
are truly here on this earth. Susie Larson said it best in her book Your
Beautiful Purpose, “If we open our hands and hearts to envy and jealousy, the
devil grabs the opportunity to tie up our hopes and dreams and choke the life
right out of them. The love of God ceases to operate through us when envy has
its way in us”. How much are we missing out on because we are allowing our
insecurities to dictate our influence in the lives around us? How many people
are we hurting because we are allowing walls of self-doubt and uncertainty to
prevent us from reaching them with the love of Christ? I will end this with a
paragraph from Susie Larson that really opened my eyes and efficiently sums up the point of my writing this post. She said, “We are in
this together. We’re all in different stages of growth and development, but we’re
all precious to God, all a work in progress, all engaged In the priceless work
of the kingdom. Do remember that what we notice in others is something that we
already possess to some degree—or at least have the potential to-- both
positively and negatively. When we refuse the weakness and pettiness of a
jealous spirit and instead rise up as co-laborers tending to a greater cause
than our momentary selfish whims, the enemy is the one who gets blindsided.
When we’re together – refusing to let pettiness divide – he cannot tell where
you end and I begin. All he can see is an unbeatable army”.
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