Recently, a friend of mine suddenly lost their close friend in a very tragic way at a young age. A week later, he told me, “I need you.”
This instantly struck something in me. I replied, “you don’t need me, you need God.” In hindsight, I’m sure it came off as regrettably insensitive and my timing was poor- not looking at the big picture.
But in that moment all I could think was, no one needs anyone. That’s not even healthy. I don’t believe someone should ever need someone else.
Can I trust this person I let in my circle if he has a huge differing fundamental belief?
As we’re gathered in a rare moment of girl time at 7/11, eating chocolate, pretending we’re home in America for a moment as the street food vendors line the sidewalk outside, Stefany says, “I need you may mean something totally different in your life than it does in his.”
“In your life, someone needing you usually meant they were taking advantage of you,” she proceeds. That’s when it hit me. I’m now too far the other way on the pendulum.
I worked so hard to never fall back into enabling or into the role of ‘rescuer’ that I wound up way out on the other end where my hearts too cold to let anyone in.
“People need each other,” Shirletha says. I look around at my four squadmates I’ve grown to trust quite a bit, anticipating them to disagree with Shirletha. Instead, I see head nods. “What? No. What?” I double take. “Do you really believe that?…”
I ask Emily, the calm, cool, collected one, “Emily, do you believe that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
I just sat there with my twisted facial expression.
I had no idea this was a common belief. I truly thought it was unhealthy to need people. Digging deeper, I realized I’ve never really been in a position where I’m allowed to need someone. Actually, I have and they did not meet that need. In every close friendship/family member instance, they fell short of that need in a major way.
Now, I have friends who are there for me. On the race, back home, and in Washington I have amazing friends who truly inspire me with their honor and trustworthiness, but I have only let them in to half of my heart.
The half that’s missing is healthy expectations.
I expect my friends to fail me.
I expect my family to fail me. Which overall is a pretty ‘safe’ way to live. I’ve spent the past 8 years with the mindset of I don’t need you, because you’ll fail me, then I’ll resent you, so let’s just avoid that pain and play it safe.
I’d like to think I’m pretty self aware, so I’m still not sure how this seemingly obvious issue slipped between the cracks and stayed in my blind spot for so long.
I’m learning that the subconscious things we do to protect ourselves are hidden pretty deep within our psyche. That is until something doesn’t feel right- some sentence sticks out to us and feels like sandpaper on our skin.
I encourage you to not overlook those sandpaper moments..
Because it’s just like God to show up like this, patiently waiting to see if we caught His message: this is of your flesh, not your spirit.
Back to friendships. Stakes are high when you care about someone; friends, family, significant others, or even coworkers. You have skin in the game if you’ve spent time building a relationship with anyone. You must be open enough to trust in them to be there for you like you’d be for them; to care about you. And when you’re wrong, you learn to stop trusting your own judgement.
That is a trust I let go of when I was 16. There are only two people I’ve ever fully let know me. All of my sides, my flaws, my strengths, my deepest thoughts, my struggles, etc.
One of them was my best friend throughout middle school and high school. We were so close, in middle school we would call each other in the morning before school to make sure we were matching and in high school I’d go over to her house before class so we could do each other’s hair and makeup. We even picked the same classes when we could.
We played every sport together; volleyball, basketball, track. We were so in tune with each other that in sports, we wouldn’t even have to call out where we were or if we were open, we would know exactly what move the other one was going to make and it made us an unstoppable team.
People compared us from the beginning. We both were sporty curvy blonde white girls, so we already had that going for us, but as we got further into high school people would compare us in our features, style, body type, boyfriends, athletic ability, etc.
The beautiful friendship we had became a competition in little ways, but I didn’t really mind, because we just had so much fun together and laughed all the time.
We were those people that unknowingly interrupted the room just by our presence and laughter. We could hardly care, because we were living on the same brain wavelength. We couldn’t spend the time trying to catch everyone up if they didn’t get it.
The second person was my boyfriend from 16-21. We spent practically every day together for 5 years and got along pretty great.
I knew more about these two people than anyone in the world and they knew more about me than anyone.
One sunny day I get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. It happens to be a special day, but I’m not fully present in the moment. My dad takes my brother and I to Cat Tales, a tiger/cheetah/bear zoo up north and then surprises us with a German Shepherd puppy.
Holding our new puppy in my arms on the ride back home, I get a call from my boyfriend. He says he’s coming over, we need to talk. He spends like three hours explaining everything to me and turns out he cheated on me with my best friend.
It was easy to be more mad at her. She knew me best. We were soul sisters. All the comparisons flooded through my mind and I resented them all. I felt like we were finally in a competition against each other that I didn’t know existed and I lost.
From then on I made a subconscious vow to never let anyone in too close, because it’s not worth the risk. It’s not worth feeling like a fool when you get burned by the people you love. These were the people I chose to put in my closest circles. Part of me blamed myself for being a poor judge of character and not seeing it coming.
Now that’s not the worst pain I’ve experienced, but it did take me months to forgive and years to trust either of them again. And even then it was never the same and in some ways I think it hurt them more than me. There’s been much redemption in each of their lives since and I’ll always have love for those two humans from afar.
The problem is I’m 24 now. I’m spending a lot of life loving people and not letting myself accept their love back. Which in turn means I’m not giving out as much love as the Father has given me.
And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take any love to the grave. I want to spend it freely. Almost with abandon.
I don’t want to spend my life waiting for the bottom to drop out. Waiting for people to fail me. Running from anything that remotely looks like a sign of betrayal. Assuming that if I get too close I’ll fall in the quicksand that is codependency and never get back out again. I want to choose freedom over fear.
The right people will come along and be worthy of your trust. You’ll recognize them by the fruits of the spirit they display. They’ll give you small glimpses of how powerful God’s love is.
All this to say. I was wrong. People do need people. God created us for each other. He didn’t mean for man to be alone. There’s a healthy way to put Him at your center and still lean on people.
Love and let yourself be loved.
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity. Proverbs 17:17
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13
