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Kevin,Thank you so much for this very neat opportunity!
I would like to throw out a question to the ladies. What makes it hard for women to engage in close friendships with other women? I have some thoughts of my own – but I would first like to hear from some of you. What fears or concerns do we wrestle with that keep us from pursuing relationships that can give us accountability, encouragement and honest answers? I think in light of our summer prayer groups it would be good to bring some of these issues into the light, perhaps making the prayer groups even stronger. I look forward to hearing from you my beloved sisters at Grace!
Vicki
I think, like any relationship to a degree, there is a fear of judgement. Since most men have more than one outlet that can represent who they are (job, talents, sports, family, wealth, etc) people can know one part of them and not know anything about the other parts. That doesn’t really happen with, I would say, most female relationships. Those of us who stay at home with our kids full time have essentially one area in which to succeed-household management. Sure, it incompasses childcare, finances, time management, housework, etc., but it all boils down to one package-the home. We (I) are afraid of judgement by women who can actually do it all and look good doing it. It comes from a primal fear of insufficiency and inadequecy-and I think it’s hard to separate who we are in Christ to who we are to the world. We know Christ doesn’t judge us on how many stains our kids clothes have, but our “friends” may; not on the outside, but on the inside, can secretly keep records of wrongs. Not that it’s wrong to have clothes with stains! It’s just another lie the world would have us believe to prevent us from closeness with others. It’s a hard habit to break – judging and being judged. As I grow in my faith and understanding of who God is and who I am in Him, I can let my guard down a bit. It is a constant struggle.
I have to say though, the times I have apologized for the condition of myself (and my house) when someone pops over unexpectedly, I get sighs of relief that their’s are not the only houses that look “lived in”!
It’s almost as if I have to be sure the playing field is level before I am willing to trust someone with the real me. I know my old flesh patterns of gossip and pride, so I have a hard time letting go of my inhibitions with other women who may struggle with the same issues. It’s real easy to stay “busy” with our kids and other responsibilities and use that as an excuse to stay away from relationships. It just seems safer. Our families will love us no matter what we do. Our peers may not.
Tracy
You can only form close friendships by spending time together. It is a process… at first it must be safe, casual and superficial to a degree – this is when you become familiar with a person, learning basic information about them. I think we all do that fairly well and most relationships do not progress beyond this level. To get any deeper than the casual friend, you really have to talk to a person.
We don’t have time to spend an hour or two a day on the phone. We can’t up and leave our kids and go to lunch with a girlfriend. If we are going out one night a week already to Bible Study, we can’t very well up and leave a second night each week. And truly close friendships can only be formed when life is shared on a regular basis. Both with the kids and without.
The best I was ever able to do this was when my kids were really young – 4 and under. I met with 3 other ladies each week and we let the kids play around us and we shared our lives, studied the Bible and prayed. One of the ladies in the group lived in my neighborhood and we would go to the park 3 or 4 days a week and sit and talk while the kids played. This is how you form a true friendship…time, time, time. It cannot be artificially manufactured. It cannot be rushed. Trust and familiarity come only over time. Friendships cannot form without them.
When I began homeschooling and my friends’ children started going to school, we no longer met at the park or had weekly Bible studies. Sadly, those friendships just drifted away from neglect.
This is much ramblings about nothing, but I’m really not sure that we (I) avoid close relationships as much as we (I) just don’t have/make time for them.
Vicki, what are your thoughts?
Tracy
Tracy and Carla, You have made some very good points. I think the both of them can even go together. How many times have we women not had other women over because of the condition of our home. In which case that brings in the time factor. When my sisters from Penn. come to visit me I have no problem keeping dishes in the sink(or washing them as we talk). Laundry must get done-as we share a cup of tea together. We go food shopping,cook,clean up toys and survive thousands of interruptions from my sweet children all while sharing precious memories, bits of encouragement and advice. I think today we have gotten into such a mode of entertaining that we are missing out on the fact that we are normal people,we have daily tasks that require a messy home at times. I’m not trying to say showcase your dirty laundry the next time company arrives to show them your normal. However, if you were to pop in on a Monday at the Miller home you would see our laundry gracing our downstairs hallway. It’s our big sorting day. Does it reflect to another woman that because I have my laundry out that I am in some way lazy? By all means not! I hope it would say I have a lot of kids, they wear clothes and they get them dirty.
I remember hearing about a person who said they never keep kitchen appliances on the counter, such as a toaster. Now I have been known to put my toaster away on occasion to make more counter space for company. However, if you come into my home on a normal day the toaster, coffee maker, and even the coffee grinder are there on the counter. To judge me on the basis of having a home with easy access to these items is silly. I must say I think we judge ourselves more than others do. Some of the most restful homes I have been in have had dishes in the sink, floors that need sweeping and toys sprawled out.Going back to what Carla said it’s the time spent there that I remember, the warm welcome, the sweet conversations.
I can think of another point as to what hinders deep friendships. I think our society has placed into our minds that we need to be better than others. So we tend to compare ourselves a lot with each other.(Which could also apply to the “clean house” issue) This is not a God-centered way of thinking. In fact we are to see others better than ourselves. You see it in the media all the time. We are pressured to buy the top products, have the best furniture, wear the latest fashion, or have the latest hair style to feel like we are number one or ahead of the game. Everyday big bucks are made by making women feel beautiful and yet I believe it also separates us in some ways. It’s tragic how this way of thinking has crept into the modern-day church. If we can in someway get beyond that barrier I think walls would come down. I think trust would be strong among woman because we would not dare want to gossip about our beloved sister in Christ because we feel no need to prove in some way that we are better than her. Instead we would desire to esteem her and only have praises about her. Our security would be so Christ centered that her personal struggles would not be shared with our husbands, boyfriends,neighbors or other women in the church, etc.in order to feel like we are in the “know” or not as bad off. Let’s face it- we all have issues!
My desire is to see such a sisterhood at Grace this Summer among the prayer groups. Real woman, with real struggles and real hearts to be more for Christ!
Kevin thank you so much for this blog slot!
Just an FYI… If you’re into this blogging thing, you can get a free blog of your very own at BlogLines.
The site has some nice features so you can get all the church’s blogs and comments popping up in your BlogLines page.
Check it out!
Wow, this is a complex question. There are so many culprits in keeping us from close friendships, and there are so many variables involved.
I agree with all the points already made here. I think the society we live in is not very conducive to women having close relationships. We are always competing with each other, whether we realize it or not. Society is not ashamed to display the competition, but the “church” tries to disguise it a little. Instead of striving to be the best, we often strive to just not be the worst or at least be in the middle of average. Some of this goes back to what Tracy said; we’re trying to live up to certain standards, and if we can’t, we put up a wall, because we don’t feel good enough. If we are in a competition mode, we can’t very easily be transparent with each other and develop close, intimate relationships.
I also think time is a huge issue, as Carla said. In our busy world, we are always hurrying to go somewhere and do something, oftentimes for our kids. Many times, we schedule and plan and serve and don’t take time to refresh ourselves. If we are not continuing to fill ourselves up, we cannot continue to give. I look around and see so many wonderful women all around me who are so loving and serving among their families and their friends, but when I ask them when the last time was that they had a night out with friends, without kids, they have a very hard time remembering. Now, I’m not saying that “we have to think of #1 first.” I’m simply suggesting that if we neglect our time with friends, we are not as prepared to face the challenges of our job as mothers. We need the input of other ladies who are also walking with Christ, and we need occasional rest from the everyday stress of providing everything that our kids need from food to clothes to counsel to training to medical attention to taxi service to maid service, etc. I think many women are focused on being a good mom to the point of overscheduling their families and losing the closeness of their own friends. When that happens, what kind of support do they have in their times of trial?
I would like to suggest that just as our relationship with God depends on time spent with Him, and our marriages need regular times of nurturing, maybe in the form of date nights, so our friendships need regular times of attention, like times together without kids. Maybe in days gone by, these times were not as important, because neighbors were more neighborly, families lived closer and were more a part of each others’ lives, and families were not running back and forth from one scheduled event to another. But in our day in time, when this is reality and our time is often hectic and yet isolated, I really think we can benefit from, and even NEED, time together as “just the girls.”
I hope that through the women’s ministry at Grace and through opportunities like the summer prayer groups, that we can knock down some of those walls that we all build and that we can harness some of our hectic time and use it to build life-changing friendships. If we can, how much richer will all of our lives be, as we grow closer together and more supportive in building each other up in the character and priorities of Christ!
Hey everybody! I had to think about this for me personally.
For years I gravitated to hanging out with the guys ( with four daughters and one son, my mom told me somebody had to hang out with the brother:) ).
Actually, I found that boys made up easier, were more active, and weren’t into a lot of emotionalism. I did have girlfriends, but they usually came to me to either get advice (about the other girlfriends or about boys that they liked and I knew well). I usually belonged to several ‘cliques’ and did not hang around the same people all the time.
I believe that I wanted to hang around people with whom I identified. Perhaps that’s back to the ‘fear of judgment’ motive that Tracy brought up, but I believe that it’s also a little different. If we can learn to appreciate the differences in others (recognize that God creates us with differences with a divine purpose), then perhaps it allows us to include others who are different into our circles. In doing so, we are not all one-sided in our strengths and weaknesses, and learn to value others in the body of Christ (and those outside of it as well) for having qualities that God can use to balance us out.
God used my immediate and extended family as the primary place to learn to acknowledge and appreciate differences. We all benefit from acknowledging/ accepting our own limitations while allowing the strengths of the others in our family to compensate for our weaknesses. Once God taught me this, the importance of including different people in my relationships outside my family became more apparent.
Good question, Vicki! A good friend and I used to speak on this topic at MOPS groups in California and we have spent a lot of time dissecting this.
I met this particular lady at MOPS and she seemed very positive and approachable…someone I would like to get to know. So one day I called her up and invited her and her kids to spend the day at the new aquarium that had just opened in our area. She agreed to pick us up. When she arrived I was outside waiting on my doorstep with my two babies….I didn’t want her to find out on our first “date” what an awful housekeeper I am. After we got everyone strapped into their carseats, her car wouldn’t start and we needed to call AAA. So, in I went to get the cordless phone – she couldn’t possibly go in to use it! She made the call and we sat in her car and waited. The time came for me to nurse the baby but he was asleep, so in I went for the breast pump. The fact that I was more willing to show this woman my naked breasts than my house still amazes me. So finally AAA gets there and off we go. We had a fabulous day at the aquarium. She says on the way home “I’ve had a great day with you and I just don’t want it to end, so why don’t you call up your husband and have him come to my house for a BBQ.?” So off we go to her house. As we opened her door, my jaw dropped. There was three loads of laundry on the couch, school books and jammies on the floor and sky high dishes in the sink. It looked like a bomb went off, yet she still invited me over. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and also with shame as I thought of all the times of fellowship I had shut down by my unwillingness to expose my flaws. After I shared all this with her, we talked about how “unproductive” friendships have become. Friend outings seemed to consist of meals out, trips to the mall, etc. There seemed to be much “keeping up with the Jones” and envy involved as well. We talked about the way it used to be, with women living in closer proximity, and meeting to help with work…spring cleaning, canning, etc. We pledged to make our friendship a productive one. We began to have “cleaning day” at each others house once a week. We helped each other declutter (read: pry things out of each others hands) and get organized. We organized freezer cooking days and filled our freezers with nutritious meals. We planned special things for our kids to do (kept in the cleaning day box) and prayed for our kids as we cleaned and cooked. Of course we had our disasters, like the day we lost the baby down the street, and the time we tried to make 60 quarts of spagetti sauce in a 25 quart cooker, thanks to my difficulty with basic math concepts. And then there was her greyhound who kept getting out and running off – retreiving a greyhound requires car keys and NASCAR level driving skills. But you know, it was the very best friendship I ever had, and I was devastated when she moved away to another state. I prayed so hard for God to give me another Kathy. And you know what? He did, and her name was actually Kathy! Then I devastated her and moved away. I have not found that level of friendship here in the South yet….I have to admit that I am a bit intimidated by how nice everyone’s house is decorated and feel a bit rumpled and frumpy to fit in here. I long for a friend that can know my imperfections and still want to be my friend. I long even more for the friend that will care enough to help me grow and will encourage me to grow into the homemaker God wants me to be, even if it means standing over me and teaching me how to properly clean an oven and advising me that that ratty flower arrangement on the mantel has lived a full life and needs to move on. That kind of transparancy – given in absolute love, with permission on both sides, of course, was so freeing. I grew so much personally and in my relationship with God when I had that kind of accountability.
Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble on. Can anyone relate to this or is this just the mad ramblings of a hormonal pregant woman?
Love, Lesli
Hey ladies – sounds like you feel most welcome when the place you’re visiting is a wreck.
Just want you to know: the next time you’re expecting company — your husbands and kids are right here for ya. 😉
Lesli,
I’ll take you up on that cooking together idea anytime this summer, and would love to plan for the fall and winter meals, so that I will know what days we’ll be doing it. I can’t give you any advice on how to make flower arrangements or be a better homemaker, but would be more than willing to try the things I’ve been told to do with you and pray with you and let God transform us together!!
Thanks for sharing!
Love you,
Rose