Friends

I have to say I have some really great friends. With everything in life, there are two sides to it. My friends have great qualities, and sometimes, they drive me nuts, too. I'm not saying I don't appreciate their presence in my life, because I do. My friends are some of the best people you'll ever meet. They will give the last of anything they have to anyone. They encourage me, lift me up, listen when needed. Some of them are the type that will tell you to your face exactly what you don't want to hear, are direct, and won't hesitate to tell you the truth.

A few of my friends, I've noticed, don't give to themselves what they so generously offer to everyone else in their lives. As much as they believe in everyone else, they seem to lack the same belief in themselves. They're not the first people that I've noticed with this habit. Sure, everyone gets down sometimes, and needs to be lifted back up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they ought to be perfect. However, if you believe in me, then it hurts when you don't believe in yourself. So what type of friend am I? What do I give back to my friends?

I tell them the truth. I tell them that they can do whatever it is they need to do, but they have to be willing to do whatever it takes. From previous experience, I've always appreciated the people who were direct, honest, blunt, and straight to the point with me. I may not have liked it at the time, but I needed to hear what they said, even if I wasn't happy about it at the time, or for awhile after that. So I understand that at times friends need you to be comforting, and simply listen to their complaints, and why they're unhappy or discouraged--we all need to have someone to vent to. If you come to me and you complain about the same thing you were complaining about ten years ago, I'm going to tell you what I would want anyone else to tell me: If you do the same thing over and over again, you'll get the same result repeatedly. If you are expecting something different, you're going to be unhappy. If you want something to change, do something different, and CHANGE YOUR MIND about something you've been doing.

Change is scary. I'll be the first person to tell you I hate it when things change. I like my comfort zones. But the lesson I've learned repeatedly is that something new requires faith, faith in God. Believing in yourself. Faith that everything will work out, even if you have no clue what will happen next. It requires that you remember that even if this doesn't work, it isn't the end of anything.

Recently, the U.S.A. remembered the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In the middle of feeling a ton of fear, I thought of those people who have moved on, and I thought to myself, if they can do it, so can I. They lost so much in so little time, and they are strong. I've had to be strong before, and I can do it again. I'm not alone. We often feel alone, but in reality we never really are. There is God, and I remember Him being my closest friend during the hardest times of my life. So I can't give up.

I told my friend that I care about him, and I believe in him. I told him that there's no way he can tell me how he believes in what I can overcome, without applying it to his own life. That's not right. And I told him I care about him enough to tell him the truth, even if he doesn't like or agree with what I say. At least he'll know I'm honest with him, which is my first priority. You know who I am by what I share with you, by my own actions. If you don't know who I am, how can we be friends? This is what I believe in, that we believe in one another, we believe in ourselves, and we believe in Jesus Christ, because He is our Savior. If I can't share that with you, when it's such a deep part of who I am, then how can we be great friends?