You know the feeling. You’re on Facebook, taking a little stroll, minding your own business {well, not exactly}. You pop by to see a friend, wondering what she’s been up to lately, and … {What? No longer friends?}
The reaction can be surprising. And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The initial flush of indignation. The questions. {Why? When?} That twinge of rejection. And finally… the wince that comes with realizing that it’s been so long since the two of you connected (online or otherwise) that you can’t remember the last time you contributed more than a quick Like to the relationship.
And that’s when my heart begins to pound. Self-reproach rises in my chest to confirm my worst fears. {I’m a terrible friend. What a loser. I’d unfriend me, too….} But, thankfully, beneath the stirred-up shallows of insecurity are deep waters where wisdom and revelation have been stored up for moments such as this. And the deeper I’m willing to explore my own heart, the more I learn to trust what it knows is true. So I listen. I ponder. I write. I pray. I stroll through my internal spaces to find out what’s really going on, and I ask God for His insight because He sees things much more accurately than I tend to. That’s what good friends do.
The heart can be a good and honest friend, too, if we’ll let it. A trusted confidant when we leave the door open for good-hearted friends to pop by and see how we’re doing. The heart that learns to befriend itself usually learns it from people who befriend us with a goodness that makes better friends of us all. And somewhere along the way, without realizing exactly when or how, we begin to open up to the treasure of honest-to-goodness relationships.
Then one day when we’re just minding our own business… strolling through life with good friends… we notice something stirring inside. And our hearts begin to pound with the realization that who we really are is rising up. Beginning to brim over in our conversations and interactions. Confirming what we couldn’t see for ourselves, but they’ve been trying to tell us since… who knows when.
It’s who you are … that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds.*
* Luke 6:45, The Message