What are you looking for?

Ever feel like “real” friendships aren’t worth the risk?

Back when I was sporting a baby bump (still in the “Is she chubby or pregnant?” phase)—I found out that my third-born was a girl.

There in my then-testosterone-dominated household, pint-sized males regularly calculated the highest step they could jump from without a trip to the ER. They sprinkled around the sides of the toilet. Children’s books instructed me in terminology for construction equipment I never knew existed.

I should have been happier. But a real part of me was afraid.

Female friendships had left me limping.

In high school, I much preferred guy friendships. Guys meant what they said. No back-biting or whispers or veiled kindnesses.

See, sometimes it’s easier to avoid rejection or misunderstanding or judgment than it is to be with other people.

My desire to control rejection, at its ugliest, led to a near-eating disorder. (Read: Some part of me would literally rather starve than be rejected.)

I wish I could say, But that was then!

Yet in the stressed version of myself, my reflex is still to clam up and isolate. The risk just seems too high.

But as it’s been said: She who waits for perfect friends finds herself…

Alone.

Thanks, but I prefer dysfunction

I am actively working toward more vulnerability with safe people. Toward relationships with a few more sinks of dirty dishes in the background, and a little less lipstick in the foreground.

Sometimes the effort feels herculean. I’ve even been guilty of offering just enough appearance of authenticity–a “curated imperfection.”

But I appreciate this blogger’s thoughts on just how vulnerable women in ministry should be. She writes that isolation is spiritual dysfunction.

When I choose aloneness, I choose against God’s design of a whole body.

What if friendships are the one choice you have?

True story: I know personal stories of a growing number of women who’ve literally had a mental breakdown in part due to isolation.

What if our facades and efforts to keep it all together are contributing toward our implosion?

Of all the uncontrollable factors in our lives, what if defeating isolation is the one choice we do have in staying healthy?

Choosing Change

As someone wrote me this morning, emotional health and vulnerability allow us to actively participate in God making us holy. 

Choosing community means choosing to grow and depend on each other. Trusting each other, even when it feels strikingly like streaking in an ice storm.

Turns out my fears for my daughter weren’t unfounded. Girl drama abounds in middle school. (Shocker.) But together, she and her mom are learning to choose the relationships that make us more whole.

What’s the baby step you’ll take with me to choose vital friendship?