Excerpt
The Better Friend
truth 1know the difference between miserable comforters and unreasonable loveI wasn’t cool in middle school. While all the cool kids got picked up in carpools, I spent thirty-five minutes riding down random streets in a sweaty school bus waiting for my bus stop. I wore glasses that I got at the same store where you can buy mayonnaise, toothpaste, and tires, so they weren’t glamorous. I didn’t even have braces yet because I didn’t finish losing my baby teeth until age fifteen. You probably have a young cousin or niece who finished losing them at seven years old, but I was a late bloomer. And late bloomers are hardly ever cool. My front teeth each leaned in opposite directions, and there was a big gap in between them. I didn’t make the middle school cheer team, and I struggled to fit in with the girls whom I desperately wanted to call my friends.
I wanted so badly to sit at the cool-girl lunch table. All those girls had Vera Bradley lunch boxes while I had the “interesting”-looking school lunch every day. Even the teachers favored the popular group. The cool girls could do toe touches and, even in middle school, knew how to talk to boys. But no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t included. I remember sitting near them and listening in on their conversations about sleepovers and their Webkinz collections.
One day, I approached one of the girls and asked what Vera Bradley pattern her lunch box was. When she said, “Cherry blossom, duh!” everyone laughed and turned away from me.
Exclusion stings.
Now that I’m older, I wear contacts, have straighter teeth after finally getting braces (even though I should’ve worn my retainer more), and even occasionally get a lot of likes on Instagram. But despite all that, I’ve noticed that I still feel like that awkward middle schooler approaching the cool-girl table of friendship.
See, no amount of followers, dinner parties, happy hours, sorority date parties, or invites can make up for the bullying, hurts, isolation, and empty lunch tables you experienced growing up. In fact, you need to find contentment in who God made you to be before you can truly find friends who love you in a way that reflects His love.
No amount of followers, dinner parties, happy hours, sorority date parties, or invites can make up for the bullying, hurts, isolation, and empty lunch tables you experienced growing up.
When I noticed I had mainly shallow and one-sided friendships, my first reaction was to blame everyone else: Why couldn’t they be better friends? Why couldn’t they choose me, care for me, and show up for me? I blamed my disappointment on their inability to see my worth. Although sometimes I truly was betrayed or let down by others, I can now see that the disappointment actually started with my inability to see my worth.
In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a novel by Stephen Chbosky, there is a popular quote that many of us have heard and lived out: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” I’ve spent too long feeling insecure and inadequate and therefore settling for superficial friendships. I couldn’t change how those people treated me or saw me, but I could change how I saw myself and what I accepted. When I walked confidently, understanding my worth, I found people who celebrated and cared for me.
So what I want to ask you, new friend to new friend, is this: How have past friendships, hurts, betrayals, exclusion, bullying, and insecurity shaped the way you view yourself? Do you believe this has affected the way you search for friendships?
When I think about middle school Grace who wanted so badly to sit with the cool girls, I can’t help but also be reminded of the early-twentysomething Grace who moved to a new city and once again wanted so badly to be in the cool girls’ group text, be invited to their fancy brunches, and somehow have such cool friendships. But like I said, no amount of table invites, friends, followers, or likes can make up for the insecurity and empty lunch tables you had in childhood.
Friends can comfort you and cheer you on, but it is up to you to accept yourself.
Once you commit to following God along the path to better friends, He will often start the journey in your own heart. And He’ll help you discover three things:
Better confidence in who He made you to be. You don’t need perfect confidence. You will still face bad days, insecurity, and exclusion. But you must learn to accept your quirks and be okay if others don’t see your worth. Don’t let someone else’s inability to see your value stop you from walking in confidence. Make sure your security comes from God, not from others accepting you, adding you to the group text, or inviting you to their lunch tables. Friends can comfort you and cheer you on, but it is up to you to accept yourself.
Better contentment when life isn’t going how you wish. You can find contentment in lonely seasons when you remember the friend you already have in Jesus. Jesus is your Savior, your Lord, and also your friend. John 15:15 says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” Jesus spoke this to His disciples, the men who followed Him on this earth and documented His miracles, but I believe He was also thinking of you and me when He said this. Jesus made His life, character, sorrows, and strength known to you. So you, too, should let Jesus in, share your life with Him, and call Him your friend. Once you seek Jesus as your friend, you have a friend for life who creates miracles unexpectedly.
Better discernment when it comes to friendships. Interestingly, when I was almost begging to be included at the cool-girl lunch table in middle school, I didn’t realize that one of my future best friends was sitting at a table on the other side of the room. I was going where I wanted to belong, not looking around for the spaces that God could’ve been leading me to. While I was wasting my time hoping these girls, whom I had nothing in common with, would include me, good things were waiting for me. When Jesus is your friend and you consistently pray for His guidance, you will get this gift called discernment. I joke that we women have “girl gut,” the power of the female intuition. However, discernment is even more powerful. It leads you to truth and stops you from trusting delusions that will only lead you astray. If I’d had more discernment in my middle school years, maybe the Holy Spirit would’ve led me to my future best friend even sooner.
Discernment is tricky in our social media–obsessed, social-climbing world. Yet it is crucial. There’s a man in the Bible named Job who was basically a good guy, called “blameless and upright” by God. Satan assumed that Job only worshipped God and trusted Him because of his prosperity. God allowed Satan to cause havoc in Job’s life—not because He wanted Job to experience havoc but because He knew Job’s faith was strong enough and would be an example to others, including us thousands of years later. So chaos came Job’s way. He lost all his property, his children died, and he suffered physically. And then his friends turned on him.
At the beginning, they did comfort him, but after a while they inaccurately described God’s view of him. Job’s friends belittled him in a time of great stress, grief, and pain. They made him feel worse. Job even told them, “You are miserable comforters, all of you!”
I can look back on my life and see that some friends were miserable comforters. But often, I wasn’t as blameless and upright as Job. Job’s faith prepared him for the chaos he would face. Job knew his friends weren’t being helpful, and it hurt. But he was able to discern that they were miserable comforters and not truth tellers.
Now, you and I, we have to discern when friendships are good and challenging and, like Job realized, when they aren’t from God.
