Monday, September 10, 2012

Iron relationships

I have known my best friend for longer than we've really been best friends. She was in school and worked with my husband before I "stole" her, about the time our firstborns arrived in the world. Our eldest are 18 and almost 18 now, so we have a few years invested in our relationship.

One thing I have learned is that she's just not good at everything. She is the first person I call in any crisis, and she is great at "Put on your big girl panties" speeches. She is a gale-force wind to help me choose the right thing when I don't feel like it. And she's not really good at emotional comfort when the bottom drops out of my world. I've learned to mitigate how much I seek her out in those times, and to minimally brace for her reaction.

Please note, she endures a lot of drama from me. When we first met, I was so sensitized to different issues, thanks to a lot of pain from graduate school, there were times she could barely converse with me. But that is my point: tolerating each other's weaknesses and working through them has given us a stronger relationship.

She has a no-nonsense approach to life, and I have seen her siblings in crisis through her perspective. Each one has something to contribute, and together they handle family trials, each playing a different role. In the midst of this uniqueness, there could be a lot of annoyance. It often seems like one of the siblings isn't doing the "right" thing, and yet my friend finds their strength and expects them to shine there, not putting them in a situation that she herself might be able to handle beautifully but would certainly put one of her sisters in failure mode.

Long set up to say...how do you see your church? Are they family? Do you play the role God designed you to play and realize that everyone else has a different part? There were so many times over the course of our friendship that one of us could have walked away. Think about it: the Bible describes friends as "iron sharpening iron," which seems extremely abrasive and irritating and totally anti-Hallmark. God will put people in your life who will rub on you. Be willing to look for His hand in that relationship or situation that you would rather flee. Maybe He is sharpening you.

1 comment:

Flea said...

Oh, I hate you right now. Okay, not really. I just have a tough time with sharpening relationships. God knows that. It's why He gave me the husband He did, so I can't get away from it.

In the church? Huh. Dunno. Right now I don't know what the thing is I do. Stepping back and looking. Not looking very hard at the moment ...