I was in a (virtual) session with my therapist the other day when she made mention of the people I have in my life.

She told me I keep really good people around me.

I definitely agree.

Through very little doing of my own, I’ve been blessed with friendships as fresh as two and as old as 20 years old. Through marriage, work, school, or random chance meet ups in coffee shops, I have built a solid foundation of friends.

While my friend are from all walks of life and incredibly different, I started thinking about why some friendships have worked and others have faded. So today, we’ve got to talk about friends and the five ways my standards for friends have been refined by my sister circle.

There’s no expectations of what friendship looks like.

Every season isn’t a season where I’m on the phone everyday with my friends. Aspirations, family responsibilities, and work obligations can make it hard to stay in touch.

But when we get on the phone…it’s like no time has passed. When I think about the why behind those kinds of relationships, I realize we hold no expectations for what friendship should be in any given season.

Now, it’s not that we don’t expect the other person to be there, pray for us, or cheer us on, but how that happens can be different from one season to the next.

This season, a lot of friends are having babies and I’m either showing my support by cooking or sending them restaurant gift cards. It’s okay if they can’t talk to me all the time, gestating a human and then ensuring its survival is no small feat.

Unmet expectations are the catalyst for resentment. How can I resent someone who is expanding their family, making career moves, or taking care of themselves?

How can they resent me?

We know it’s less about the quantity of touchpoints, but the quality of each. I have choked the life out of friendships because my expectations of what a friend should be were so rigid, it broke when it could have just reformed.

They are slow to anger and quick to forgive.

A month or two ago I made one of my friends feel deeply judged. She didn’t tell me what I did, but how she felt. Even in her hurt, there was no accusation, only admission of her feelings.

Her admission stung my feelings, I felt the rebuttal wanting to claw its way from my throat. The desire to explain away her feelings so she could see things my way. I mean if she knew my intent, it would erase my impact right?

Besides being wrong, what mattered most in that moment was preserving our friendship.

So I apologized and told her I’d step back because it’s never my place to make her feel judged.

She accepted my apology and that was that.

That’s the whole story.

It immediately brought me back to another time I had wronged another friend a few years ago.

It was the last time I spoke to that person. I called and texted and apologized, I even saw a family member of hers and tried to explain myself, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

If I’m honest, even though it was over two years ago, I felt gripped by the ending of that friendship until I saw what reconciliation looked like in this one.

It was in receiving true forgiveness from my friend a few months ago, that I realized that old relationship with that beautiful woman had to end a few years ago. It doesn’t change the love I still hold for her, but it does help me to close that chapter.

My friends believe the best of me. And their belief in me challenges my doubt in myself and others. I don’t have to play mental/emotional gymnastics anymore. My friendships don’t require admissions tests. When I screw up, because I do, I apologize, and we keep growing. When they screw up, it’s not an opportunity to hold it over their head.

That’s what real love is.

Every interaction is mutually beneficial.

Sometimes my friends look up the nearest department store with the kind of Spanx I need. Other times they stay with me on FaceTime while I learn to wear them.

We watch movies together with facemasks and our favorite junk food.

When outside was open, we would book impromptu flights to beautiful places when the flight deal popped up. Or sometimes, we’d just get in the car and take a roadtrip.

And sometimes we spend hours talking about how the devotion we’re currently reading connects to the sermon we watched together.

Whatever it is, it feeds my spirit.
And it feeds hers too.

I don’t walk out of conversations tired or depleted. Doing life with the people in my life is energizing, not tiring.

You might be thinking, but Nicole, what about the moments when we have to lift our friends up? When we have to cover them and love them.

Oh girl, I hear you. The prayers of my friends have carried me through some stuff. But we can’t confuse mentorship for friendship.

If you’re always the one everyone comes to, if the advice only flows in one direction, if they come to you, but you go to someone else…you might have a mentee and not a friend.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! It is a blessing to be able to pour into someone else, as long as you both know what your relationship is, you won’t feel the friction of unmet expectations.

They love me at my lowest.

I am a recovering con artist. I would say I was a perfectionist, but I’ve never been concerned with making things perfect. I’ve just been really worried about making others think everything was perfect.

I did it because it worked. Until my facade was met with unfavorable results, I kept on keeping on.

Telling my friends the ways in which I was struggling?!

Asking for help?

Nah, I don’t need help.

Help means somethings not perfect.
And I was perfect.

Except I wasn’t.
I was exhausted.

I maintained relationships that were dependent upon my perfection. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine.

One of my favorite things to do now is skip around shouting about how much of a hot a mess express I am. People roll their eyes at me, but it’s true. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness, so the togetherness you think comes from me is really the Father carrying ya girl clear through the mess.

And because I do life with people who boast about their weaknesses too, it means I have an entire community of people who cover me consistently when I don’t even know what to ask God for.

A couple of weeks ago, I started fasting and my sister circled prayed me into that thing. Immediately and without hesitation.

They send me the podcasts and messages I use to write these posts.

They hype me when I’m terrified to step into who God has called me to be.

With them, it’s safe to be unsure, unkept, and imperfect.

I’d choose them again.

My friendships set the standard for who else I bring into my life. It doesn’t mean I want carbon copies of them, but it does mean I strive to duplicate their energy, heart, and motives in my life. I would be grateful if I met others with their spirit.

Can you say this about the people in your life? Can they say these things about you? Do the people in your life make you want to recreate their energy?

We weren’t meant to do life alone, and who we do life with determines its sweetness and richness.

There’s magic in our musings and our friendships,
Nicole