5. Worrying about what our friends will think of us instead of trusting them with who we really are.
For many of us women, our craving for connection is in direct conflict with our obsession with perfection. If our houses need to be tidy, if all the laundry needs to be put away and all the floors need to be swept or vacuumed and the candles lit before we’re comfortable inviting someone over, we’ll never be up for it. Because, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”
That standard of entertaining means that we’ll be too busy cleaning and prepping to remember that friendship works best when we show up just the way we are. Putting too much pressure on our appearances – whether in the mirror or in our houses – means that we’ll get tired of all that frustration and busyness and we’ll collapse on the couch and shrug and say, “It’s just not worth it!”
Because it isn’t. Because friendship shouldn’t equal entertaining. No, friendship should look more like yoga pants – comfortable, old, worn in, and stained. I think we can do it. I think it’s easier than we think. But it starts with our willingness to open the door whether we’re prepared or not. It starts with admitting that our quest for perfection is a gift to no one. Real friendship will insist on getting past that front door of perfection until it finds that closet or drawer that’s stuffed full of our junk and it will insist on opening it.
And if we’re willing – if we’re willing to lay down our expectations and open our front doors and our hearts, just the way we are, the honest truth is we still might get hurt. We still might get disappointed. But as a dear friend reminded me this morning — “It is worth it and God has to be in it.”
Dear friends, we come to friendship admitting our flaws and lowering our defenses not because we’re promised we’ll never get hurt again. We do it surrendered to the truth that even though friendship might hurt us, we are called to love other people. So we bravely, vulnerably, deliberately choose to do so. Just like our Jesus showed us how to do.
Some of the best and hardest work God calls us to do is to love other people. One day, one woman, one misstep at a time.
We take the time to figure out friendship not because it is easy. But because it is necessary.
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This article originally appeared at LisaJoBaker.com. Check out Lisa’s new book, Never Unfriended.
