Fighting For Friendship!
This is my blog time, but I’ve had a call from a friend who wants me to call her back. This probably means being on the phone for a while and that means I miss out on my small window of opportunity for writing stuff - I get ½ hour while kids are watching Playschool - supposedly uninterrupted but rarely works that way! So I thought, “I’ll call her after my blog time is over” and then another thought slipped into my mind, “What would God want me to do? What’s more important? Writing my blog or phoning my friend?” Well the answer was, as they say, ”blindingly obvious”.
One of the many things I’ve been reading about in ‘Captivating’ is the importance of relationships and how we need to fight for them because relationships are something the devil is really opposed to. Which is why keeping a friendship is truly hard work.The devil wants us to stay isolated and believe the lie that we’re alone, that we don’t really have any true friends who really care about us…definately a lie I’ve fallen for, all of my life and especially during the last four months.
I have very often lamented, ”I don’t really have any truly good friends; I don’t seem to have a connection with anyone; no-one calls to say hi; I just don’t fit in - it’s the same as when I was in school; what’s wrong with me?…” As I read ‘Captivating’ it slowly dawned upon me that these thoughts were lies that the devil has been feeding me most of my life, but not just me, these are lies he whispers to almost every woman I know.
I started to question these “thoughts” and had wondered if I truly was the square peg in the round hole that I thought I was and if I really was as alone as I thought I was. Before I’d begun my Captivating Journey I’d been vaguely wondering if I was the only one who felt this way, or if this was how all my women friends, acquaintences and relations felt too, but at this stage it was just a vague wondering and it didn’t go anywhere and I most certainly didn’t pursue it! But as I read ‘Captivating’ I started to understand that these thoughts were lies and I am not the only one who has them. Sadly it seems that a large number of us girls think and feel like, “I don’t really have any truly good friends, I don’t seem to have a connection with anyone, no-one calls to say hi, I just don’t fit in, I’m not good enough…”
However, despite this revelation; despite beginning to understand that if I feel alone and friendless, then it’s likely my friends do too, I hadn’t actually done anything about it. I’d been thinking about it, thinking that there’s a few friends I need to call, but I just hadn’t got round to it. But I realised after getting back from my hot chocolate that three girlfriends had called up in the last three weeks. I chatted with one on the phone for an hour, another came over for a couple of hours and I visited another for a hot chocolate and a chat (our boys played together - six boys under one roof - the oldest being 6! It was really loud and we were constantly interrupted and they all played together really, really well!).
God is so good to me, so gracious, so compassionate and so merciful. I hadn’t got round to calling my friends, so He’d got them to call me, even though they have been suffering from the same thoughts and feelings of being alone, not good enough, not fitting in…
God is awesome and wonderful. God stands with me, beside me and for me - I am not alone! And I have friends, I have friendships that are worth fighting for and friends that are worth fighting for! ”For God is nothing if not relational” (this is a quote from somewhere, I’ve heard it many times before) I mean, he is the “Father, Son & Holy Spirit” afterall, the epitomy of relationship, so relationships, friendships are very important to him. He created me, and I am a woman and women are very relational. I have decided to stop denying that part of me and to let myself be relational and to stand up and fight for the relationships and friendships I have with my family and friends!
The icing on the cake for me, is that one of those friends and I, have decided to get the ‘Captivating Guided Journal’ and work through it together! I have wanted this since I started reading ‘Captivating’ I’d told God that I’d love to be in a small group doing this book, but, “I’m not going to make it happen. If that’s what you want God, then you need to make it happen, not me.” And He did! I’d been telling my friend about ‘Captivating’ and the journey I was on and I’d just ordered the Guided Journal. And she asked if we could do it together! Woohoo!!
We’ve asked one other friend to join us, so when we start in a fortnight’s time, there’ll be three of us - unless of course God has some more women he wants to bring into the group. It’s time to stop moping around, to stop worrying that ”nobody loves us and we’re not good enough…” - that sort of thinking is soul crushing and keeps us in little boxes. God loves us and that is enough. It’s time to step out and be the women has created and called us to be! And to also now be aware that we are going to be attacked even more!
Later that day I told T all about it and he was stoked. He has been reading ‘Captivating’ too and had just read about the part near the end where it says,
‘We live in a dangerous world.Satan’s opposition of the Church is vicious. He bears a special hatred for Eve. It follows that God would want to ensure that a woman helping to advance his Kingdom would be offered the covering and portectn of good men…God desires that wherever and however you offer yourself to the Body of Christ, you;ll have the portection of good men over you. Not to hold you back, but to set you free as a woman. Christ has made man as his warrior, to ffer his strength on behalf of Eve so that she might flourish.”
His thought was, maybe he could start a ‘Wild At Heart’ group with the other husbands of us girls so that they all discover how to be the men God created them to be so that we can be the women we’ve been created to be. Obviously, I thought that was a brilliant idea and “my heart lept”. However, I also told him that there was no pressure from me, only if he felt God leading him to and he wanted to.
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