Photo Credit: Abhi Sharma, Creative Commons
Guest Post by Ed Underwood
[This post is Part 4 of a 5 Part series, Sustaining Friendships]
It was a Monday morning and I wanted to quit. After the adreneline overload of a Sunday, I’m ready to quit just about every Monday. But this one was different. I was on my way to a religious assignment and I hate religious stuff, even if it’s evangojive religious stuff.
I called one of my best friends, Kevin Butcher, and left this message: “Pray for me, please. I’m on my way to this religious event, so you can guess how I’m feeling about that on a Monday morning. Just pray that maybe one molecule of my body and one nano-thought in my mind could be even a little like Jesus.”
The message went on for long time, but you don’t need to know and I probably shouldn’t blog my venting sentences.
What I want you to know about Kevin is that I feel safe with him because he knows my story better than anyone on earth besides my Judy. He knows it all–the wounds of my earlier life, the ways I’ve let people down, the ways I’ve hurt people, the people who have hurt me, my passions, delights and dreams, my regrets, secrets and fears.
How did he learn my story? He has loved me enough to become a student of Ed. He wants to know. He asks. He probes. God in heaven does he probe. He pushes back. He calls to check. He prays. He spends money on plane tickets so a few of us can gather in the desert every year and talk about our lives. He cries with me when my life hurts and laughs with me when life is funny. He feels the pain of my failures and the joy of my victories.
He’s one of my sustaining friends.
Just like the first two qualities of a sustaining relationship, commitment and vulnerability, the best thing we can do to find the friend our heart longs for is to be that friend. If I want a sustaining relationship I have to become a student of my friend. Deep inside our heart is that need to be known, for someone to know our story and love us anyway. More that that, to love us in light of that story. Love that knows is a love to be trusted. Love that does’t know is a love that feels one disappointment away from abandonment.
Oh how I fear being known.
But oh how I long to be known and loved.
It’s the mystery of confession. When I get honest with God I’m not telling Him anything He does’t already know. Still, He wants me to know that He knows. Not so He can shame and guilt me toward doing what He wants me to do, but to convince me that His love can be trusted. “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Thank you God that this doesn’t say, “If we confess, He will throw up his hands and say, ‘What a worthless dirtbag!’”
Sustaining relationships call for intentional study–a lifetime of learning how to love one another toward our destiny in Christ. What should I be studying?
Here are a few suggestions:
- Study the rough edges of their defense mechanisms. As iron sharpens iron,” the Proverb says, “so a person sharpens his friend (27:17). During my years as a wildland firefighter I spent hours sharpening the tools we would use on the fireline. It was tedious, but there was nothing more useless than a dull shovel or pulaski. I need a friend who will grind down the me I present to the world to impress, and speak to the real me.
- Study the tragic roots of the behaviors that push you away. The Bible says that we come out of the womb broken, but life breaks us more by pouring darkness into our souls. If someone looks into the darkness of our lives and runs, it just hurts more. But that friend who cares enough to look into the darkness not to judge but to understand why I do the things I do is a precious resource. All the relatives of a poor person hate him; how much more do his friends avoid him–he pursues them with word, but they do not respond (Proverbs 19:7). This is one of the saddest verses in the Bible. I always picture the little boy or girl in us that is poor in spirit because of wounds running desperately toward someone begging them to help them heal. I need that friend who knows my story so well that when I act out he will say, “That’s the wounded Ed talking. How do I love him past the wound?”
A sustaining friendship is that “I’m-so-onto-you-I’m-not-going-to-let-you-go-there-but-I-know-how-to-bless-you” type of friendship. These are the people who know your story so well that they can talk you down from the precipices of life—the edges you’re so prone to stumble over–anger, despair, isolation, medication. I want friends who know me so well and I know them so well that we’re to the point that we can anticipate the potholes of one another’s life.
That’s the third characteristic you want to look for in a sustaining relationship–intentional study. But before you go looking, be that type of friend.
Questions: What am I missing? Does the I’m-so-onto-you-I’m-not-going-to-let-you-go-there-but-I-know-how-to-bless-you characteristic of a sustaining friendship make sense to you?
