Let’s do a quick inventory. Do you have any friends in your life that will speak truth AND love to you?
Truth speaking friends don’t sugar coat or tell you what you need to hear, and loving friends stick by your side no matter what. Love should be unconditional.
The friends that can handle both truth and love are the ones who will hold space for your shortcomings and pray with you. These are the type of friends that help us to break barriers in our life and overcome hard things.
I believe that God divinely plants these people in our life to help us align with the path He has planned out for us. Hold tight to these friends.
Sometimes when I feel like I’m not sure what the next step is or what I should be doing to align myself with the plan God has for me, I go find a quiet place. Let’s note that this hasn’t always been my go to. One of my truth and love friends recommended it.
Actually, before this recommendation I’d find myself at a brewery or eating something terrible to cover up what I was struggling with. I’d doom scroll and isolate from the world. Isn’t this how all single parents with their kids away for the weekend were coping?
My child would be gone, my full nest now empty. It still feels like an appendage goes missing. It was a brutal time in the beginning.
I’m learning that the most sacred comfort I’ve experienced doesn’t come from things of this world like drinking or eating. It doesn’t come from gossip or judging. The comfort I need comes from a source of divinity. My comfort comes from Jesus Christ.
I’ve been so uncomfortable lately! “The thorn in my side” as Paul would call it is a deep need for stability. This dates back to divorced parents or maybe even farther back in my ancestry.
Alls I know is I crave a firm foundation and the only ground worth standing on is the ground right next to Jesus’s feet. Another one of my truth and love friends told me that once too.
I took a trip out to the beach this week to do some of that quiet sitting I’d mentioned earlier. Even on my solo walk, I found myself talking to God. “LISTEN TO ME” I felt Him say.
I’ve got the gift of gab, He’s the one who gave me this blessing!
“Stop talking and listen to me, please.”
So I stopped talking and kept walking. The moment I stumbled across a fisherman I made a few comments and asked if he’d seen the bald eagle flying by. He nodded yes and we both agreed that was a pretty cool sight.
Other than that I did listen, just like I felt God’s spirit ask me to do. I finally came to sit by the waters edge and watched as each wave would build, crash, crumble down, smooth.
One by one, I noticed the pattern of each swell coming in. The tide changing. I admired the color of the water and took deep breaths of the salty air blowing. The moment felt holy.
The heaviness that I’d been carrying started to drift away out to sea with each wave receding right in front of me. My own problems were shrinking as my eyes grazed the vastness of what I could see. I looked for myself in each wave, wondering which part I was today.
I did not feel as confident as the building wave face.
My strength not nearly as great as the current ripping.
With the lack of stability I was feeling, how could I balance on the peak?
“Pssh, right now I’m the white wash.” Scoffing at myself. I observed how I was just as muddled and mixed as the white wash when each wave came crashing.
I kept watching.
As each wave washed up to the shore, the white wash would spread a smooth layer across the surface, glistening in the suns setting light. “Well the white wash looks nice when it does that”, I’d thought. The wash would dissipate and make its way back out to sea.
A process of building, collapsing, smoothing, dissolving. Was Jesus using this process to show me something?
The truth of the matter is that we will have big swells of challenges and trials in our lives. They will build up within us, peak, and then come crashing down; leaving us muddled and mixed up. The love comes in when that trial or challenge smooths out and we see the blessing or the lesson glistening in the mix.
Jesus is the truth and love kind of friend we all need. He loves us so much that I believe the people He sends into our lives are an extension of that grace and mercy.
Come to find out, the waves don’t seem to have stability either. They are constantly moving. Feels a lot like me. Yet, they have the process down and work with the way they were created to be.
I’m grateful to find comfort and relativity in Gods creation. I’m grateful for friends who share truth and love with me openly. Most importantly, I’m grateful I can depend on a life in relationship with Jesus as my source of stability.
My challenge and my hope for you this week is this: Take the next opportunity you get to find a quiet place and listen. If you have trouble sitting still, try it this time running, walking, or moving. Just tune into nature and not a podcast, music, or reel scrolling.
Minimize the chatter in your mind. I literally talk out loud to Jesus or chat with Him in my head. (I’ve heard some people don’t have inner self talk?!) *Gently* remind yourself that this is your time for Jesus to talk, not you.
Give yourself 5-15 minutes, whatever time you can offer, and allow the wisdom of Jesus to wash over you. Find truth speaking and love offering friends. Make the time to listen!
Peace be with you, always all ways!
Local Pulse Writer & Holy Moments Columnist, Makenna Curtis
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14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
