Relationships: Friends
Friendships: The Good, Bad and the Ugly
My grandfather worked really, really hard to talk me out of moving in with a gal I worked with just after I moved to Arizona. He even offered to pay the rent for me and not have me live there. I really didn't understand what the big deal was, so of course I didn't listen and moved in anyway. Fast forward several months later, I was living my worst nightmare. It was horrible. He was right. We worked together and lived together. She became purposely mean, claimed she was my boss and really affected my mental state. On top of it, I hated where I worked and really needed something different. It was a mess.
Why do I tell you all of this? Well if it wasn't for her, God wouldn't have brought me my amazing husband. I went out with her and some of her friends one night and on that night I met the person who I would spend the rest of my life with. Talk about a blessing in disguise. In hind sight, I feel like this has happened so many times in my life - the friendship was rocky, difficult, time sucking, one-sided but then looking back there is always the...well if I didn't become friends with this person, I would have never met this person.
My point is that sometimes friendships are brought into our life, serve the purpose God had for them and then it is time to move on from that relationship. There are times when a friendship just simply needs to end. I went to a seminar where they spoke about access and that we should establish different rings of access into our lives. Sometimes friendships need to change in their rings of access - the relationship has served what it was intended to serve and now it is time to move on to make space for the future friendships God has intended for you.
On the other hand, there are those friendships that are just so easy. You haven't talked in forever but can pick up right where you left off. You can call them anytime for anything, be very real and very honest, where the values just line up and everything works. God gives us both the easy friendships and the challenging friendships to have a stable foundation but also grow us and change us where we need to change, to bare the fruit where he intends us to bare it.
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