How often I hated watching friends drift away as I was growing up... early on, it was when they went off to public school, or different churches, then college, and recently it is falling in love with :gasp: a BOY and getting married.
I have difficulty being vulnerable with people, so when I form a close friendship, it hurts terribly if anything happens to tear them away... it feels nasty, awful, depressing... you name it, that's a broken friendship.
That's why I started this courtship wanting to remain in touch with my dear friends. Have I succeeded?
It's hard to gauge... by e-mail, yes, in person not so much.
Priorities for married folks ought to be...
1. God.
2. Spouse.
3. Children.
4. Work (you could argue with the order on this one, but providing for #2-3 is kinda important).
5. Friends.
So us in-betweens have a dilemma... we have someone who is somewhere between #2 and #5... but definitely closer to #2 than #5... yet because they are not yet the significant other, it doesn't seem quite right to other friends who are left out.
I still feel guilty that I am not there for my friends as much as I used to be... and that I'm not spending a lot of time culturing our friendships and helping them to grow.
But if you think about it, how would the person you're in a relationship with feel if you told them that your friends are equally important to you and thus you spend more time with them instead... this other person who is already sacrificing their own time and wanting to spend the rest of their life with you in the closest possible human relationship... what are they supposed to think by that statement?
Whose fault is it? The one 'lost in love' or the 'dejected rejected'?
Change is always hard, but maybe we're looking at this the wrong way.
It's the difficult seasons that shape us... for better or worse, depending on what we do with them. I want my friendships to deepen - not stay the same. Maybe I disappear off the map for a while... maybe in a year I come back, "Why, hullo stranger!", for a time of renewing and deepening friendship. And since I firmly believe everyone should get married :insert big wink: ;), hopefully by that time we'll both be married and have a lot of new common concerns/interests... but if not, we can still have the cool and unique opportunity of learning and encouraging each other by what God is doing in our life, single and married alike.
3 comments:
Just had a flash of Ingrid Michaelson's "Maybe". Don't know if you'd even like her, but it so goes with what you're talking about! I like your thoughts! I feel the same way about friendships, and it's neat to see them change shape over time.
My oldest daughter had a similar revelation. Before she courted her husband, she would be hurt to 'lose' her old friends when they were in a relationship and married. She knew she would not do that to her friends, and she tried really hard. But she realized that her husband to be actually was supposed to come first, and that is why her friends who had gotten married before her seemed to have drifted. Not out of mean=ness or selfishness, just out of doing what they were supposed to be doing in a new phase in their lives.
Me too! I feel awful sad when friendships grow apart! Especially being 2,000 miles away. I know when coming back, relationship will have changed. I'll have changed.
I also know it's life- the way God made it.
Giving thanks in all circumstances, I am very thankful that you, my friend, have a friend who is somewhere between #2 & #5!! :-D
Emily - thank you for your honesty and sincerity.
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