I’m lying here staring at the ceiling
Thoughts spinning, centering on you
And wondering what it is I’m feeling
Times before I’ve been alone
Content with myself and silence
Now you’re all my mind and I listen for the phone
My life is no longer a simple world
Of me—then everyone else
Now this craziness reeling inside has unfurled
A need to include just one more
This need is so foreign yet basic
Its sudden presence rocks the core
Of my carefully tended walls
Surrounding for so long feelings
To which a bleeding humanity calls
Cries for love and compassion
Hurled with anger and pain
Forced long ago the need to fashion
A barrier to hold at bay
The multitude of societies debts
I haven’t the strength to repay
Now you’ve come brandishing a key
And lying here within this room
There is no longer only me
This poem was written my freshman year in college for a guy I thought I had fallen in love with. It could just have easily described any of my "best friends." The intensity has often been as equally shattering to my equilibrium. And as equally shattering has been the nose dive those friendships have quickly taken. It's taken me over 35 years to realize that the crash and burn stemmed not so much from the course of the friendship, but from my definitions and expectations starting out.I have a prayer journal that includes long walks and conversations with God. At times these “conversations have read more like “I want or I need” lists. On one walk, taken just after such a crash and burn and figuring that God was busy and had perhaps forgotten my needs, I helpfully (read frustrated and angry) reminded him, “Lucy had Ethel God. When do I get my best friend?” God knew what my spirit was really crying for even if my soul wasn’t listening, so being the parent that He is, He gave me what I thought I wanted. From that faithfulness on His part (why does faithfulness on His part sometimes feel more like “ouch” on my part?) I have been graced with a truer understanding of intimate friendship.
When as children we receive wounds to our spirit, we can become stuck in the developmental stage we were in. I was stuck for much of my life in the basic trust stage. Like an 18 month-old who thinks mom leaving the room means mom has disappeared, I thought a friend leaving my immediate contact meant my friendship had disappeared. This left me prone to wanting that friendship reassurance daily. I required a phone call, email or time to just hang out, even if in the guise of “doing something for God.” This constant contact then became my definition of a best friend.
I based my biblical justification for this constant “intimacy” (misreading intimacy as amount of contact and not open and honest vulnerability) on friendship models in the Bible. My main model was Jesus, and how He had His intimate circle of three. If Jesus had a group of intimate friends that were always with Him, I reasoned, then we should also have those few best friends. In going through the book, Demolishing Strongholds, with a friend to whom I am accountable in this season, God opened my eyes. The intimate three: Peter, James and John had a relationship with Christ, in which He was the head, or their best friend. We also are to be in intimate relationship with Christ our bridegroom and best friend, and He is to have headship in that relationship. Yet scripture does not teach us that Peter, James and John were in that kind of relationship with each other. The focus is on Christ as the center of the friendship, with the three forming a circle around that center. Undoubtedly, Peter, James and John were intimate friends, but it in no way mirrored or replaced their relationship with Christ (wherein an intimate relationship would become an inordinate relationship). It also did not stop them from going out, each on his own, as they were sent.
In another intimate relationship, Ruth tells Naomi that she will follow her and make her home and her God her own. But again, God used this intimate relationship for a season to bring Ruth into covenant relationship with Boaz, so that the line of David could be furthered. In not clinging to her relationship as it stood when they left Moab, Ruth was in right relationship, with God as the center between her and Naomi.
I wrote recently on desire and whether we will allow that God created need within us to remain open for Christ, or will we fill it with others. Will we seek that best friend here on earth? In seeking to OK my wrong relationships, I had wrongly interpreted some of the friendships God has modeled for us in scripture. For this I have had to repent, but I am deeply thankful of His promise, “And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you” (Phil 3:15b). If I remain teachable and accountable, then He can renew my mind, and He is faithful to do just that.
I now have a different understanding of friends. Jesus is my best friend. Not only are we in an intimate relationship, we are also in constant contact. I check everything with Him first. My husband is as close a best friend as one can have on earth. We are also in an intimate relationship, and we spend at least a portion of every day together. We check things with each other to come into agreement with God’s plan for ourselves and our family. But I also have a few intimate friends. I don’t do things with them constantly; sometimes we can even be apart for months or years. I don’t check everything with them; I don’t even constantly update them on every aspect of my life. What makes them intimate friends is that I trust them with those vulnerable places within me and within my life, while at the same time they trust me in return with their own vulnerabilities. I don’t need to share every deep and intimate thing with any particular one of them. It is simply that what I do share is both safe and reciprocated. Intimate friends are a blessing from God. They give a rich flavor and depth to our lives, but the meal itself is Christ.
