A couple of weeks ago, I began hosting a Bible study in my home with a few friends. I explained to them that my heart for this study was to open my doors to women and mommas who are always serving others.
I wanted to give these friends just a few hours on a Saturday morning to be served themselves. I make breakfast, we drink lots of coffee and just share real life. We all need that sometimes, don’t we?
I see memes that joke about how difficult it making friends is in our 20s and 30s. I saw one that was so true. It said, “Adult friendship is two people saying, ‘I haven’t seen you in forever — we need to hang out more’ over and over again until one of you dies.”
I laughed — but it really is far too easy to make plans and then cancel, simply because something always comes up or you’re just too tired/anti-social/you name the excuse.
But what I have really learned in the past five years, and what this book reiterates, is that if you want to have a good friend, you have to be willing to go first.
The study we’re going through is called We Saved you a Seat by Lisa Jo-Baker. It talks about finding and keeping lasting friendships by imitating the love that God has for us.
I love this quote from the book: “As much as you might try to quit it, friendship is literally woven into your bones. With every breath you take, you are entirely dependent on the life breathed into you by a God whose entire existence is a living, breathing, friendship of three [Father, Son & Holy Spirit.] He has designed friendship into your DNA, so trying to cut friendship out of your life is like trying to cut a piece of yourself out of yourself. It will hurt. It will leave open wounds. It’s not healthy for your soul.”
The first topic the girls and I discussed was the difficulty of making lasting friendships as women — especially busy women — who are juggling motherhood, marriage, careers or life in general. It can be so challenging to maintain solid friendships.
Jesus Was Never Too Busy for Making Friends
One of the points that completely convicted my heart in the study was the relationship that Jesus had with busyness. Even when He was headed to do something important, we never see once in scripture that He expressed to someone that he was “too busy” for them.
People were Jesus’ priority.
He never responded with agitation or frustration.
He responded with genuine grace.
He spoke to the people with patience and he loved them with an unconditional and selfless love.
A lot of the time we wear our busy lives as a badge of honor. We may think that it displays popularity or accomplishment. Oftentimes it just makes us seem as if we’re needed.
But while we flash the badge of busyness to represent something we consider good, it nearly always does the opposite and compels people to turn the other way.
If we’re honest, friendship and people just aren’t always a priority for us. We worry more about the state of our homes than the state of our relationships. If we want to have real, lasting relationships, we have to stop justifying our lack of community with our full schedules.
So what does that look like for us when a friend needs us to babysit their kids and it’s the last thing we want or have time to do?
