Disclaimer: This is not written to hurt anyone or make anyone feel badly/guilty. The purpose in writing this is to help others reconcile their head and heart knowledge, and fully believe that healthy relationships are possible.
If you’re still with me…here we go.
For most of my adult life, prior to stepping back into church and faith, I have not known what it looks like to be in a healthy relationship or friendship with a female I have an interest in. Like in When Harry Met Sally, I questioned if it was possible for men and women to just be close friends, with everything else off the table.
I have had a number of female friends over the years, but in the cases where’s there’s been an interest beyond friendship, wounding has occurred; either from me, from them or a mutual wounding. This statement is admittedly a blanket statement, and not true of every instance. No two people are alike, and so every relationship is different.
That said, pretty much every friendship I was part of in my decade away from God was fraught with a mutual wounding by the end of them. That looked different each time but yielded the same results. I was participating in my very own, self-imposed exercise in insanity. I went into every friendship where there was interest saying, “This one will be different.”
HA!
Sure, they were all different, but the outcome was the same. Broken hearts and deep cleaving wounds.
When neither person has any designs toward making God part of the relationship, the chances of us screwing it up is magnified ten-fold. I tried to pursue relationships without God in the center of them, and they all crumbled. I walked away from with seldom a friendship intact.
I.
What’s the common denominator in all of this?
*Points to himself and backs out of the room sheepishly*
Fast forward a decade…
Stepping back into church, I had hopes that this would change.
I have certainly found far more healthy relationships in church, than I ever had outside of it. But, even in church, there’s plenty of relationally unhealthy people; myself included. Even if you‘ve grown up in church and been sheltered, for the most part, from the struggles of the world, none of us are immune from the wounding that comes with stepping into relationship with others in a broken world.
And on top of that, there’s this annoying, long-tongued liar who skulks around like the snake he is, and deftly implants his lies into our heads. Lies that can cause us to go down horribly wrong paths, we see as right in our blinded state. Lies that can have us believing that the person who has entered our lives, who is very different from who and what we have known before, is just like the rest. The father of lies is remarkably adept at birthing his lies in our heads and using our very own thoughts and pasts as fertilizer for them to grow deep roots.
I’ve helplessly watched many past relationships and/or friendships that “could be…” fall into ruin as I and the others involved listened to and believed the lies placed so meticulously into our heads drive one or both of us into rash decisions. I’ve wounded and been wounded. I’ve broken trusts, and had my trust broken.
And this has even been since coming back to church, by the way.
I don’t say that to discourage anyone from stepping into church and faith.
Actually, quite the contrary.
The thing is we all carry baggage and past hurts with us. Even in the healthiest relationships, wounds come. We have to learn how to approach healing from those wounds in a healthy manner. It’s taken me a long time to learn this, and I still get it wrong more times than not. Still, now I know Who to take my relationships and friendships to. Now I’m in the right network and go to the best specialist in the universe for healing.
For all the negative that’s come in my pursuits, there have been marked differences in recent years, and as God has matured me, He’s also started to bring healthy people and relationships into my line of sight. When God is allowed to be involved, and we start to relinquish control (that’s the most important part), even with two broken people involved He can (and does) still work in them both. Substantive friendships and unbreakable bonds can start to form.
Alright, I talked about the bad that I both caused and endured in my past, now for the good.
In recent years, I have started to see what it looks like to step into relationships with healthy people. Let me be clear, I’m not calling out or dogging anyone from my past as being unhealthy. As I already said, I was the unhealthy common denominator in all those instances. What I am saying, and what I hope you’re getting is that there are healthy people out there. And as you grow in and trust God, He starts to put those people in you path. They aren’t perfect. None of us are. But I can speak from firsthand knowledge that they exist and are there in greater numbers than you may believe.
I share this next bit hoping that those who have showed up in good health know how thankful and honored I feel that they are part of my life, and have continued to lean in where before the reaction I became accustomed to was to turn and run. I also share this to give you hope. Hope that there are healthy people in the church, and that God will start to bring them into your life, either as “dear little friends”, budding friendships and supports, or eventually the partner you will run with on the race He has set before you.
If I haven’t been real and raw enough yet, here we go.
Over the course of the last threeish years, I’ve seen God cross my path with a number of His daughters. Has the outcome always been good and in line with how He wants both parties to view friendship and relationship with the opposite sex? Definitely not. We’re imperfect. But where before there was just destruction in my wake, there are now far more strong, fruit producing friendships.
More and more I’ve found that as I’ve matured and learned what it is to show up in a healthy way, the people on the other side of the equation have become an increasingly more pleasant surprise, and a drastic change from who I was previously used to. In moments where I’ve feared to share something personal that would have facilitated turning and running, I’ve seen them lean in. More times than not, I now find myself walking away from some tough conversations I would have previously been afraid to have saying, “Huh…so this is what healthy, hard conversations look like?! Bring them on, God. I’m good with this!”
I do still find that surrendering relationships and friendships to God is a struggle. But the key is that I actually want to work on this.
As a friend and mentor once said, “God’s going to take it from you if He chooses. It’s up to you whether you hold your hands open and let Him take it with minimal to no pain, or tighten your grip. He’s still going to take it. But now He has to pry your hands open. Now there’s hurt and pain left behind. That’s not what He wants for you. He wants to take this good thing to give you something even better.”
If I’ve learned anything in my stubborn, hard-headedness with relationships and friendships with the opposite sex its that surrendering saves a lot unnecessary heartache, and often results in a friendship preserved. But even if that’s not the case, surrendering allows for healing, even when we are faced with possibly mourning the loss of a friendship.
This is how we form lasting, strong, and deep-rooted friendships with the opposite sex. We lean in. Relationships aren’t easy. They aren’t supposed to be. Nothing worth pursuing ever is. Stop running. Start leaning in.
I could stop there, but I want to illustrate this with perhaps the best example of a healthy, Christ-centered friendship I know firsthand of.
The reference I made earlier to a “dear little friend” refers to a woman brought into my life through a commonality you maybe don’t think of as a good way to start a friendship; grief. We met in Grief Share at Gateway, and it wasn’t long after that when a friendship really started to form. Both of us Star Wars, C S Lewis, and just general nerds, a bond was bound to form…well, in this case at least. Ours is a friendship that has been bent to the point of breaking but has withstood every attack the enemy could throw at us. Though both of us have behaved irrationally and lashed out from our past wounds, we have always leaned in, when before we would have watched others run, or even run ourselves.
She knows this, so saying it here does not bring surprise with it. She was one of my interests at one time. It’s difficult to see God’s light shining so brightly through someone and not find yourself attracted to them.
But we were placed in each other’s paths for a bigger purpose.
Friendship? Oh yeah. In the nearly two years I’ve known this incredible woman, our friendship has grown deep roots and withstood gale-force storms. But God is still revealing the full purpose of our friendship. In the meantime, we will continue to lean in during the difficult times and hold each other up. God waited until the right time to cross our paths, knowing full well that to do so sooner, we would not have developed the spiritual and relational maturity to form the bond we have.
I share this story and the friendship I’ve seen battle tested many times over, because I want those reading this, who have struggled as I have in relationships to believe that it is possible to have healthy friendships with the opposite sex, even when there’s an interest beyond friendship. But that requires work. It requires surrender also. Surrender that interest, because if God converged your paths, there’s a reason for it. Don’t let your mind and heart be muddied up by trying to hold on. Let him work His purpose. What comes from that; what God wants to give us is far better than whatever great thing we have envisioned.
When you find these types of friends, you go the extra mile to keep them in your life. More than that, you start to see God at work in those friendships. You start to see that it’s not just the two of you leaning in. God is there as the third strand Solomon speaks of in Ecclesiastes 4:12.
Verses 9-12 contain one my favorite passages in the Bible.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
There is verse after verse in the Bible to illustrate the importance of relationship, and why God did not design us to be alone. But this passage has always spoken to me the most.
As I wrap up, I leave you to marinate on this passage. Think about it like this. God is that third strand spoken of in the triple braded chord because we need Him. He is the Ultimate. But He designed us as man and woman, separate but equal. He did this because He knew we would both need the penultimate; each other. Find the penultimate(s) in your life and lean in when you do. They may only be there for a time but be thankful for them. They are the people God has set aside for us, to keep us going and spur us on to finish the race.
I leave you with this from a pastor and mentor: “Stop chasing after Christian men/women. Chase after God. Then maybe look to see who’s running the race beside you and stop and say ‘hi.’”
The Random Musings of a Nerdy Christ Follower 