Category: Friendship

A Little Library Misunderstanding

2 Comments

proverbs 19-11

It was a tiny bit of a library misunderstanding.

My son played quietly with the toy trains and the dinosaurs (who knew dinosaurs and toy trains went so well together?) so I sat quietly and read.

That’s when I heard two little girls nearby trip along into a conversation pit without realizing it.

They were only about three or four years old, sweet as can be, with ponytails and pink shoes.

Here’s the transcript of what they actually said:

Girl 1:  Can I play with you?

Girl 2:  (As she searches the Lego bin for the right block):  No, I’m playing Legos right now.  We can play later.

Girl 1 then pauses just as she was about to pull a chair up to the Lego table.  Her face reads surprise, then sadness and a little hurt.  She turns away and plays with the farm animals instead.

There were no tears and there was no conflict.  No one tattled or fought.  Each just went about doing her own little thing,  unaware of what the other little girl was truly thinking or feeling.

And, that’s the thing that gives me pause.  Neither of these girls really understood what the other one meant to say.  What each of them truly meant was:

Girl 1:  May I play Legos with you?

Girl 2:  Oh, sure!  I’m playing Legos right now and I’d love for you to join me.

But that’s not what happened.  Girl 1 was asking to join in the building fun.

Girl 2 thought she was being asked to stop her Lego building and go do something else with her little friend and by golly she was having a good old time making Lego animals right now.

Their conversation just missed a little.  It’s like they shot two arrows.  One went under the target and one went over the target, but no one hit the mark.

What resonates a bit with my heart today is when I’m offended or hurt and I let critical words sink deep into my soul,  what if I’m actually misunderstanding?

Sometimes people say hurtful things and they mean them.

Sometimes people say hurtful things without meaning it, but the pain is there just the same.

But sometimes people say things and we just miss.  We thought they meant one thing; they actually meant something else.

And we tote around that offense as a heavy burden, putting up walls of defensiveness in our relationships to protect us from future hurts.

Yes, they should be more careful.  What you say and how you say it matters.  Controlling our tongue and watching our words is a must.

What if we were slow to take offense, though?

I love the Amplified version of James 1:19:

Understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters. Let everyone be quick to hear [be a careful, thoughtful listener], slow to speak [a speaker of carefully chosen words and], slow to anger [patient, reflective, forgiving]

At times the best thing we can do in a conversation is pause.

Taking time to respond rather than react can keep us from misunderstanding, from holding onto hurt, and from escalating conflict.

I have an email sitting in my inbox right now and I’ll be honest, I’m offended.  It is critical of me in ways I feel are unfair.  My defenses are up.

But I’m choosing to pause.

I’ve taken some time to ask, “God, is this true about me?” and I’ve waited and listened for the Holy Spirit’s truth.

I’ve considered whether I truly know this person’s intentions.  Probably they didn’t mean it this way.  It’s most likely, since I don’t know them very well, that I just don’t understand their humor or perspective.

I read over Proverbs 19:11:

Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense (ESV).

and even Ecclesiastes 7:21-22:

Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others (ESV).

We live in an easily offended world.  People curse you for simple mistakes and seek vengeance for misunderstandings and accidents.

We are so often quick to anger and quick to speak, leaving behind the wreckage of broken relationships and the ache of loneliness.

I want instead to say little and to listen much.

Sometimes I fail.  I am easily bruised by the criticism of others.

And yet, when I filter the comments of others through the gauze of grace, I can grab hold of truth and let the rest go.  I can respond with more love than I was shown.

Pausing gives us time to choose humility and wisdom, grace and gentleness, and it helps us hit the mark instead of missing and messing up.

It Would Be Easier if We Didn’t Have to Love Our Enemy

Leave a comment

My daughter was about 3-1/2 years old when she made this enemy.

After a week of summer dance camp, she declared that she absolutely did not want to take ballet in the fall.

Did she enjoy dance?

Yes.

Did she have fun at the camp?

Absolutely.

Did she want to try the dance classes?

No.

End of story.  No explanation.  I plied her with Mom-questions.  She stuck to her decision without explanation.

In October, we sat together on one of the benches in the dance studio waiting room watching the tiny dancers file out after class.  We picked up my oldest daughter and headed out the door.1corinthians13, photo by Cora Miller

That’s when my girl said it: “I didn’t see Madelyn in the class.”

Madelyn?  Who are you talking about?

Then she exploded with the report that Madelyn always wanted to sit on the triangle at dance camp even when other kids wanted to sit on the triangle and she wouldn’t let anyone else sit there no matter what.

She sucked in one big breath, harumphed, and tossed her arms criss-cross around her chest while stomping her feet for effect..

Well, babe, Madelyn was in dance camp, but she isn’t in the regular dance class.

“Oh.”  Long pause while 3-1/2 year old process new information.

“Well, I want to take ballet then.”

All this time, territorial conflict with another preschool child had dominated her life choices.

Territorialism, jealousy, just plain old being annoyed with another person….it doesn’t get much easier handling all that mess as a grown-up.

We’ve all been there, forced into relationships with folks that drive us insane maybe with their negativity or pettiness or meanness, maybe insecurity, pride, constant bragging, insistence on arguing with everything you say, trying to compete with everything you do.

But I tell my girls this:

You don’t have to be best friends with mean kids, but you have to be kind and loving to everyone.

1 John 4:20 says it this way:

“If anyone says, ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom He has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

I quote it at my kids, but taking it to heart?  Practicing what I preach?  That’s a little harder.

Sometimes I want to edit the command, soften it a little, make it fit a little more comfortably instead of stepping on my toes.

Maybe:  “For anyone who does not love his brother….when his brother is a pretty nice person….cannot love God, but when his brother is annoying, a jerk, mean, or immature, then it’s fine not to love that guy.”

Of course, that’s not Jesus.

God is love, and Jesus showed that best by loving the unlovely, by loving the enemy.

So, I could pit myself against the ‘unlovable’ or I could choose Jesus and the discipline of kindness and sacrificial love.

It starts with prayer, but the temptation is there, too, to pray that God change them when what I need to pray is that God shows me His love for them.

Because maybe, just maybe, the person who needs changing is me.

Paul wrote this to the Thessalonian church:

 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father (1 Thessalonians 1:3 NASB).

Love itself is part of the labor.

As Beth Moore says,

Sometimes loving comes easy.  Other times it nearly kills us (Children of the Day).

This is at work and it’s at church.  It’s with the annoying mom in the PTA and the gal who drives us crazy on the sidelines at soccer.

It’s in our own homes, too.

Sometimes love is hard.  It’s labor and toil and discipline to believe the best, to serve and feel like you’ve given all and then given some more.  It’s looking past imperfections and choosing to focus on the good and lovely and of good report (Philippians 4:8).

Love means choosing to give grace and forgive.  It means not keeping score and a list of wrongs.

Love

….is

….patient  (1 Corinthians 13).

I think of a favorite promise:

 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns (Philippians 1:6 NLT).

God’s not finished with me yet and He won’t give up on me.  I cling to that.

Yet, here’s the challenge, too:  He hasn’t finished with others either.  He hasn’t given up on them.

So, maybe I need to give them the space and the grace to let God continue that work because, after all, He’s given that space and grace to me.

In June, I took time for friendship and learned that God uses others to bring me into His presence, sometimes in unexpected ways and sometimes through unexpected people.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below!  Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Invest in Friendship’?

 

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2014 Heather King

A family motto for summer

1 Comment

My daughter asks, “Why is it so much easier to get along with friends than with sisters some times?”

Four days into summer vacation and she’s already pleading for more time with friends and less time with siblings.

But here’s the truth I tell her….time with others destroys masks, facades, and fake perfection.  It has a way of dragging all of those sins and faults, all of that selfishness and the bad attitudes from where they stay safely hidden during play dates and public outings.

Anyone can behave for a few hours on a play date.gracemotto

That’s what I tell her.

Then I remind myself: Any mom can respond sweetly to her child who is having a meltdown in the Wal-Mart aisle five minutes into your shopping trip when there are people around who might overhear you.

And those TV moms—sure, any of us could be super creative, fun, and even-tempered enough to fill 40 minutes of film footage once a week.

God isn’t satisfied with superficial sweetness, though.  He wants genuine transformation.  He wants the world to look deep and long at us and see the reflection of Christ, not some plastic Jesus or some temporary super-Christian persona.

It’s part of His design with family and others to wield us as tools, chipping away at one another, breaking off the pieces that simply need to go, and  masterfully forming us little by little into tried-and-true, walking and talking, in-season and out-of-season examples of Christ in the world.

Proverbs tells us:

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17).

So He places us in families and in community with one another.

And then He gives us summer seasons…when we’re up close and personal and with each other all day instead of scattering away to schools, activities, and our own busy lives.

It’s so much time so close together that causes the explosions….when she won’t share the game, and she says something unkind, and she makes annoying noises, and her piano playing is too loud, and she’s hungry and impatient, and she wants to go to the library when she wants to stay home in her pajamas all day…when all this “self” collides with the “self” in everyone else, that’s when He reminds us of grace.

Maybe that’s the lesson in summer, after all.

Grace to rest.

Grace to stop the frantic running from school pick-ups to evening activities, tossing back granola bars to your kids from the front of the mini-van while you rush to ballet where you yank hair back into buns and push in bobby pins before class begins.

Grace to linger over the cup of tea in the morning instead of putting on the drill sergeant hat and barking out commands to children to get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, find shoes, pack lunches and then kiss them on the cheek and send them out the door just in time to rush onto the school bus.

Grace to skip the chores and pack the car for the beach.

Grace even that I need to extend to myself—to not adhere completely to the writing schedule, to post late to the blog or even miss a day—because we’re out enjoying the summer and I’m taking this time I’ve been given with my kids for these few short weeks and I don’t want to miss it.ephesians4-32 photo by Jaroon Ittiwannapong

And grace for each other.

This is the mom speech I make for my daughter after a sibling melt-down.

In this family, we give grace because we need grace. When someone makes a mistake, we don’t mock, or point fingers, or jump up eagerly to show off how they were wrong.

After all, we need grace.  We receive grace, so we show grace to others.  It becomes my call, my standard, my motto for this summer with my kids:

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

Paul wrote this:

And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ (Ephesians 4:32 HCSB).

And that’s how we breathe in and breathe out when daily annoyances and mistakes, sins, and forgetfulness, bad days, troubles, and trials threaten to consume us.That’s what we do when others step on our toes and bruise our feelings.  We forgive because we’ve been forgiven.

This summer, we lean back full into this grace and rest.  Choosing not to be stressed over the schedule, but to relax in relationship.  Choosing to forgive the hurts and cease the fault-finding as Christ uses this season together to transform us.

That’s the grace that is summer.

Originally posted June 12, 2013

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below!  Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Invest in Friendship’?

 

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2014 Heather King

Black Tea Strong and Sweet with a Drop of Milk

Leave a comment

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
John 15:15

She always asks me if I’d like a cup of tea.

From visit to visit she remembers I like black tea, not those fruity teas or herbal teas.  She places the sugar beside my cup and says, “You like it strong and sweet, right?”  Then she sets the milk down on the table because she knows I pour in a little milk and not cream.22615807_s

Her house is a home.  It’s clean but not perfect with all the signs of family and love and growing.  Magnets of the kids’ artwork dot the refrigerator door.  I see toys and school papers and the book she set aside so she could sit with me.

I marvel at her because this gift she has, this hospitality, this welcoming friends into her home and making them feel cozy and relaxed, this is a gift I don’t have.

I always thought hospitality meant fancy party planning and expensive china.  It meant having a house straight out of a decorating magazine and the whipping up of gourmet dishes with names I can’t pronounce.

And here I am this simple girl.

Hospitality seemed so complicated.  So stressful.

But my friend shows me this, it’s really pouring a cup of tea and welcoming someone in.

She never makes me feel like an interruption in her day and she sits there and lets time pass without stress or bother and just chats in this easy way she has of talking open and honest.

It’s refreshing like cool water on a parched soul.

All this month, I’m pursuing the presence of Christ by investing in friendship because when I’m learning from His people, I’m learning from Him.

My friend reminds me that Abraham didn’t scramble to shove dirty dishes into the oven, toss the laundry pile into the backroom and stash papers into the closet when God showed up unexpectedly with two friends.

He didn’t shoo them away with a list of why he’s too busy that day to chat, but maybe they could schedule a lunch date next week….

He didn’t flick off the lights, close the curtains and duck in a corner, pretending he wasn’t home in hopes they’d back on out of the driveway and leave him be.

No, when Abraham saw the three visitors trudging up the distant path, he “hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground” (Genesis 18:2).

Then, he immediately (and without complaint) abandoned his plans for the day and made their comfort his sole focus.

He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by.  Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.  Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant” (Genesis 18:3-5).

He showed hospitality to God.

Abraham begged the Lord to “not pass your servant by” and God didn’t.  He rested in that place.  Rather than delivering a divine message and being on His merry way, He sat in the cool shade of the tree, eating and chatting with Abraham.

God and Abraham “hung out.”john15-15

And when the visit was over, the Lord, having been shown hospitality, shared with Abraham the plan for Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction.  This was not the purpose of the visit, but it was a divine revelation borne out of intimate fellowship.

While we have the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives continually, still there are moments when He shows up in clear and powerful ways in the middle of our busyness.

He appears at the tent of our heart.  He inquires if we’re home, if we’re willing to spend time with Him.

Do we tell Him to come back tomorrow because we’ve already fulfilled our quiet time quota for the day?  Or do we usher Him into the center of our hearts and show Him hospitality?

Chris Tiegreen wrote:

When He comes to you in the heat of the day, do you bow before Him, offer Him the refreshment of your hospitality, and give of your possessions?  Do you aim to serve?  Then don’t be surprised if God lingers.  Don’t be surprised if He communicates with  you as with a privileged friend.”

And this is my heart, that God linger here and “not pass your servant by.”

So we make Him welcome.  We invite Him in.  We rest in His presence and rejoice in this miracle of friendship with Him.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below!  Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Invest in Friendship’?

 

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2014 Heather King

Do I Look Dead to You?

Leave a comment

Originally posted April 11, 2012

It’s Spring Break here in the King house and we’re enjoying time together and starting each morning slow.
This week, I’ll be sharing some devotions from the past as I take time for my family.

After we’ve packed the cooler, dressed everyone in bathing suits and sandals, double-checked the bag for diapers, towels, tissues, Band-Aids (for blisters), sunscreen, and more, and then loaded every last item and person into the mini-van, we have the same-old chat with our girls as we drive to Busch Gardens, the amusement park near our home.003

First we begin with the safety reminders, about strangers, about wandering away from us, and what to do if you get lost.

Then we remind them that we aren’t buying every snack, toy, or novelty item strategically scattered along our path through the park.  And no whining when it’s time to go home.

We finish up with the “friends speech.”   It goes something like this:  You are sisters.  God designed you to be best friends.  Don’t ditch your sister so that you can ride in a boat or car or dragon or whatever with some random stranger who you’ll never see again.

This last speech generally elicits the most protests.  My girls are friendly people.  They like to meet new kids and form what they are certain are life-long bonds of friendship while standing in line at Busch Gardens.

So, it was no surprise that during our spring break outing, my middle daughter stood in line for a ride and then announced, “Mom, I made two new best friends!”

Not just friends.  Best friends.

And how did she know these two new girls were now her bosom buddies for life?

“They told me their names, Savannah and Julia.”

That was it.  The loyal bond formed simply by exchanging names.

Friends, best friends, nice people you’ve only just met, a stranger whose name you’ve learned, sisters, the person you thought was your close friend but who gossips about you behind your back  . . . it’s a mesh of relationships they haven’t quite figured out yet.

As difficult as this is, even though life is busy, complicated, hectic, and hard, and investing time in those loyal friendships seems an impossible task, still Scripture tells us this is one investment that’s worth making.

We need a friend who loves sacrificially, and for whom we likewise will sacrifice.  Jesus commanded us to “love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”  (John 15:12).

We need a friend who remains faithful even when we’re at our ugliest, worn-outest, saddest, and yuckiest, just as it says in Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”

And we need a friend who is not afraid to get dirty with us as we live this resurrection life.

Jesus stood at the entry to the tomb of his close friend, Lazarus.  He heard the weeping of others around him.  His own tears trailed down his cheek.  The crowd scolded him for not coming earlier and healing his friend while there was still time.  The pragmatic folks complained about the stink of death and decay wafting out of a reopened tomb.  Mary and Martha shot hopeless, hurt-filled glances in Jesus’ direction.

Undeterred, Jesus demanded, “Lazarus, come out!”  (John 11:44).  The shocked crowd watched as the dead man emerged from the grave, living, breathing, and walking—alive.

But he moved slowly, maybe a little like a mummy in a sci-fi horror flick that plays on Saturday afternoon television.  He didn’t leap out from the tomb and dance before the Lord with all the joy of a resurrected worshiper.

Instead, “the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.  Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (John 11:44 NIV).

Chris Tiegreen reminds us in One Year At His Feet:  “When Jesus raises us out of our sinful state of death, there is something left to do before we run free.  The grave clothes must go”  (p. 21).

That’s something Lazarus couldn’t do on his own.  Jesus instructed others to come alongside him and unwrap the linen bindings, the remnants of death and the grave that still had him hindered, trapped, and blinded.

That’s the church’s job.  That’s the job of a loyal friend, who patiently strips away all the habitual sins, guilt, shame, false beliefs, hang-ups, terrors from the past, and hurts that trip us up and slow us down.

Sometimes we simply require a love that doesn’t give up on us.

Sometimes it takes someone holding us accountable with truth and lovingly showering us with grace when we struggle with the ugliness of sin.

Only a true friend skips the flattery and digs past the superficial chicanery of niceness in order to challenge us with a truth and encourage us to change.

Only a friend tells us when they see some of the grave clothes stubbornly stuck to our skin and then lovingly and patiently unbinds us so we can live in the freedom of new life.

We need a friend like that.  We need to be a friend like that, who brings grace and freedom to another.

You can read more devotionals on this topic here:

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

“Friendship is unnecessary….”

2 Comments

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art..It has no survival value; it is one of those things that give value to survival” C.S. Lewis

It was a simple survey sent home with my daughters from school.

I thought it’d take no more than two minutes to log on to the computer and complete it.  What kind of topics did I want the guidance counselor to discuss with my kids? That’s all it really asked.

Drugs and alcohol?  Grief counseling?  Conflict resolution?  Anger management?  Organizational skills?  Self-esteem?

I rated each category: Very important, somewhat important, not so important.

When I finished, I noticed the box for further comments and almost left it blank.  Almost.  It would have been much faster just to click “Finished” and send the survey on.

But I had something to say.

I’m tired of my children coming home from school upset about some new unkindness, some new drama in their relationships, some new friendship crisis.

It’s hurtful and mean and I’m overwhelmed and astonished.

Someone needs to tell our kids about friendship.  What it means. How it requires friendshiployalty, grace, kindness.  They need to know how to be a good friend and how to choose good friends.

How friends don’t steal your stuff and then tease you about “Finders Keepers.”

Friends don’t jump all over your back when you make a mistake and mock your hair style in front of a whole classroom of students.

Friends don’t expect exclusivity and jealously make up lies about you behind your back to destroy your other relationships.

Friends don’t blackmail you into doing what they want to do and only what they want to do with assertions that, “I won’t be your friend anymore unless….”

Friends don’t whisper into your innocent ear bad words and foolish ideas designed to get you into trouble.

What I really want is someone to echo my speeches to my own children, so that more kids know that in a world of selfishness and cruelty, violence, “me-first” ideologies, and cut-throat tactics—friendship matters.  Compassion, kindness, generosity, selfless and loyal love, matter.

Of course, these lessons always begin with us, and I realize slowly, we can’t just tell it, we need to live it.

The friends we make, the relationships we invest in, the way we treat other people, when we choose to make people a priority and service and compassion our lifestyle, when we take a stand rather than follow sheepishly along with the crowd—this matters, not just for us, but for the children watching our example.

It mattered for Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who chose friendship in Sodom, with those steeped in sin and selfishness.

When enemy kings invaded the land and carried Lot off as a captive, not one of his new “friends” chased down the captors to rescue him.  They quickly abandoned Lot in his need.  Shrugging helpless shoulders, they simply carried on with their own lives.

It was Abraham, the loyal friend, Lot’s faithful, caring, unselfish, God-following uncle, who left his own family and possessions and rallied a rescue team to yank Lot out of disaster (Genesis 14).

The mistake for Lot happened long before he was dragged off by the enemy. As Beth Moore writes in her study, The Patriarchs, “Lot’s mistake on behalf of his family was pitching ‘his tents near Sodom’ (p. 55, Genesis 13:12).

And while we may not be choosing to revel in relationships as sin-infected as Sodom and Gomorrah, still we sometimes settle a little too “near” compromise.

Or, like Lot, we focus so much on how to prosper and get ahead, accomplish and succeed, that we fail to feed and water the seeds of friendship with the loyal and Godly few.

Or we form friendships with those who will abandon us in a quick second rather than run to our aid in times of trouble and crisis.

What we truly need is to build relationships with truly loyal, truly wild-about-God, truly kind and compassionate friends.  Friends who show grace and receive grace.

And we hold onto those people dearly, even if we disagree or life gets crazy.

How I rejoice when my daughters choose a Good Friend. Surely God’s heart is also happy when we choose to knit our hearts with good friends, those who will rescue us in trouble and carry us back to Him when we are held captive and too weak to fight the enemy ourselves.

Watching my girls, I learn, ever-the-slow-student, how friendship is worth the time.  Good friends are worth keeping.  Play dates and get-togethers aren’t busyness; they are healthy for the soul.

And this laughing with a friend, this reaching out, this service, this calling, this mourning and rejoicing together, these two bowed heads together, and these knees bending on behalf of another are a blessing to me, are a blessing to my children, are a blessing to the heart of God.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Roller Coaster Friendships

Leave a comment

I thought I just wasn’t into roller coasters.

This summer, though, I discovered I couldn’t even handle, much less enjoy, the whirling tea cups at Busch Gardens.  I rode them visit after visit because my three-year-old finds them great fun and she has to ride with an adult.

But I braced myself each time.  My middle girl always yelled the same thing, “Spin the wheel!  It makes us go faster!”

As I hung on with a white-knuckled grip, I managed to sputter out something like, “Aren’t we spinning enough already?”

It gets worse than that.

Recently, I sat on the swing next to my preschooler as she shouted at me to “swing higher.”  I gave it a try even though it’s been years since I’d swung on a swingset and I’ll tell you what I discovered.

I’m old.  Even a swing made my stomach flip into complicated and tangled knots.

How is this fun?  This little girl next to me in a ponytail and light-up shoes was giggling and squealing that she needed to rise higher and higher.

I suppose I just prefer solid ground.  No need for speed.  No desire to let gravity wreak havoc on my digestive system.  Fun for me is a trip to the library, a hushed walk through a museum, a long stroll on a cool day, a comfy couch with my book, chocolate and cup of tea.

That is fun.  Spinning, screaming, and lifting off the ground = not fun.

This is, perhaps, why first grade friendships have me befuddled lately.  Friendship means loving one another, believing the best about each other, laughing and crying together.  It means loyalty, sharing, encouragement and support.

In first grade, though, the kids are still figuring all that out.  So, instead of the solid ground kind of you-can-count-on-me, dependable r049elationships, they end up with something more like a daytime soap opera, a roller coaster of kindness and backstabbing.

My first grader reports one day that so-and-so said, “she can only be friends with one girl and nobody else” and she stuck out her tongue or wrote a nasty note or stole my daughter’s glue stick and mocked her hair cut.

The next day, my daughter says they are friends now and played together all day.

The day after that, she reports the girl “just left her alone and ignored her.”

Even as adults, we can find this world a dizzying place to live, a roller coaster ride of the unexpected and occasionally the downright scary.

We are blessed, some of us, to have friendships and marriages that keep our feet firmly locked onto the unshakeable ground of trustworthy relationships.

And yet, how often lately I have heard of lovers who swore to “love, honor and cherish ’til death do us part” later end up enemies on the opposite sides of a divorce attorney’s table.

Even truly loyal relationships end eventually, maybe through moving or even death.  The people we count on and love won’t always be with us, not here on this transient planet anyway.

That’s why it’s so precious that Jesus declared,

“I no longer call you servants.  I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

He’s our forever friend!  So faithful, so eternally compassionate, so genuinely understanding.  This is no first-grade cohort, kind today and snippy tomorrow, supportive today and jealously cruel the next.

He’s day-after-day, in-and-out, always-and-forever loyal to those He calls friends.

But am I?

That’s what Joni Eareckson Tada asked in Diamonds in the Dust:

“What a friend I have in Jesus.  But I wonder….what kind of friend does He have in me?
Too often we stay at an arm’s-length distance, pulling back from the full intensity of an intimate friendship with the Lord.  We satisfy ourselves with “less” when it comes to our relationship with Him” (p. 400).

Of course, Jesus is faithful.  That’s His character.  It’s who He is no matter what.

The question really is more about me.  What kind of friend am I to God?  Do I pull away, afraid to get too close for fear He’ll discover the ugly truth about some of my faults, foibles and (to be honest) sins?

Do I chatter and laugh with Him affectionately some days only to abandon Him the next for busyness and more instant gratification?

Do I deny Him and stray from Him when I’m angry or hurt?  Do I believe the best about His character even when I don’t understand what He’s doing?

To be a better friend with God requires maturing past our first-grade relationship tactics and becoming day-after-day loyal and true regardless of our emotions, circumstances, or the enticements of others.

Today we can choose to be better friends to each other and to our trustworthy God who is so consistently faithful to us.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

Weekend Walk: It’s Better With a Friend

2 Comments

It’s 61 degrees outside right now and the sun shines down on the girls playing in the backyard. Folks along the street are raking and leaf-blowing.  Last night, I stepped out of my car into the chill and breathed in deep the smell of chimney smoke from fireplaces being lit the first time this fall.

Perfect weather for the pumpkin patch.

We go every year and have taken pictures of my oldest out in the pumpkin field way back when we could barely gather her hair into a ponytail.

This year, though, I surprised the girls by secretly inviting a friend to join us on our family field trip.  We stopped by to pick her up and when I opened the minivan door to present her to my daughters, the squeals of joy were fit for any celebrity popstar or princess.

Today we did all of the normal fall faire.  We climbed on tractors and scaled hay mountains, ran through a corn maze, oohed and aahed over fluffy ducklings, laughed at the rooster’s rockstar hair-do, sat still for face painting, and searched an entire pumpkin field for the one perfect prize—for painting, carving, or pumpkin pie baking.

This year, though, we did it all with a friend and, while we’ve always enjoyed our trips, that made it even better.

About a year ago, a good friend of mine pointed out the tiniest passage in Scripture to me.  Following a long litany of King David’s advisors and assistants, including men in charge of the vineyards and the treasury, his sheep and goats, donkeys, camels, olives, grapes and olive oil, as well as men appointed as his wise counselors and as tutors for his sons . . . one name stands out:

Hushai the Arkite was the king’s friend (1 Chronicles 27:33).

He must have been a special and trustworthy friend indeed to be named among all those who were valued for their position, knowledge, and responsibility.  He was valued for relationship.

Shouldn’t we all build into a friendship like that?

Thus, my verse for the week reminds us that in a world that pushes and races us through to-do lists and accomplishments and an ever-hectic dash from here to there and from this to that, sometimes what God really wants us to be is a friend.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 HCSB)

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King