THE FRIENDSHIP CHALLENGE

It started out as a Bible study, not long after we moved into our community here in Florida, but I quickly realized the format would need to change, at least temporarily.  Once April hits, many of the people in our community go back north to avoid the summer heat, so only a couple of weeks after we began meeting at my house, half our group left.  I decided then that with summer nearly here and people coming and going we’d do a book study instead of a Bible study, so for the last few weeks we’ve been working our way through Carol Kent’s book, When I Lay My Isaac Down.  

 

As it turned out, this was a great choice because what has happened among the four women who have consistently studied together is that we are getting to know and love one another.  We discovered that we have had similar struggles – serious medical issues, family issues, past hurts that still haunt us.  We share burdens, cry, and laugh together as we discover how we’ve coped and how we’ve failed – and always what we’ve learned about ourselves and Jesus in the process.

We’ve each moved here from somewhere else and we long for friends.  The study itself is helping us go deeper with just a few on a faith journey together and it has been awesome.  We still want to broaden our friendships though, to find other friends with whom we can go to lunch, chat on the phone, spend time.  So this week we have been given a challenge to step outside our comfort zones and make the first move toward someone we don’t know.  

Everyone in our community has been so nice.  That comes with moving to a place where everyone is from somewhere else.  Everyone (or most of us at least) is wanting to make friends, but it’s a bit scary.  Not every personality is comfortable striking up conversations with strangers.  Not everyone likes to be the one to do the inviting.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years, even when my kids were small is this:  if you sit in your own house waiting for someone to invite you, you’ll wait forever.  I hated to do the inviting, still do today, but if I didn’t do it, no one else did either.  Years ago I decided that I was going to move the furniture to the edges of the room and invite the moms with little kids.  Sure, raisins would inevitably get squished into my rugs and juice spilled on my floor, but I would make friends and other moms would be grateful someone else did the inviting.  I was okay with that because I was making friends.

Not much has changed.  In this lovely community where we all live in brand new homes, not a lot of inviting is happening.  So, I’m going to swallow my social anxiety, bite the bullet, and invite women here.  And I have challenged the other women in our study to do the same.

I’m confident that the Lord placed me and these other women who meet here once a week in this very community for a purpose.  If the four of us have life issues that have thrown us, but that we have survived by the wonderful grace of the Lord, then there are surely more.  If we take the first step, who knows how the Lord will use us to gently bring other women into His kingdom.  

Feeling lonely and needing friends of your own?  Take the friendship challenge, step out of your comfort zone and ask someone over for coffee, or to take a walk, or to have lunch.  You just might find that someone else is as much in need of a friend as you are - and you may one day have the added blessing of sharing Jesus with your new friend.