We’re standing around after church, nursing coffees, surrounded by the buzz of fellowship. We don’t know each other very well but we find ourselves in the same place at the same time often enough that we make an effort to be friendly. But, like with most people here, Jesus is about the only reason our lives overlap.
And so I start another week surrounded in a sea of nicety, a sea of politeness. A sea of people who I have very little in common with. But they are friendly and I am thankful for that. Really, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. It could be much worse, I realize this, I tell myself this. And yet even so it’s often not enough.
Wading in a sea of shallow friendships feels curiously like drowning.
And the damning part of it all is that there is no tangible blame. It all seems highly up to chance, this making of deep friends.
It’s like the universe dangles a complicated friendship algorithm just out of our reach. There’s something divinely mysterious about the ability for two people to truly, closely connect. It can’t be forced, it can’t be produced – it just is.
I wish I knew the equation that enables two souls to open equally.
I find myself on unbalanced scales, either too heavy or too light. I brave the scary waters of attempted friendship but find myself too weighed down and the other side aloof. Someone else comes along who wants desperately to connect with me and I’m airy, unable to meet them in the middle.
I am either rejected or rejecting.
And I don’t know why.
And I think to myself – it didn’t used to be this hard.
But that’s not really true, is it? Friendship has always been hard to grasp, I just didn’t care before – I didn’t need. Life is the thing that didn’t used to be this hard.
The thing that leaves me drowning in this shallow sea.
So I keep stepping on the scale. Waiting for someone to balance.
Hey, friend.
Me… like you. As in, I like you as a friend. And also as in, I’m like you in that struggling to build deep relationships with people.
And in a sense, this is why it’s easier to build relationships here, online, where we’re not standing face to face. Because I don’t feel nervous sitting at my desk in my home office, because you’re not standing in front of me, wondering what I’m thinking as I type. For whatever reason, us shy folks (IRL shy folks, not internet shy folks) have a hard time crossing that bridge when the person is two feet away.
By the way, you probably have a heck of a lot more in common with those folks that you think you have nothing in common with than you realize.
You’re probably very right about that last sentence. The stuff we don’t have in common is superficial.
Of course, you’re right about the other stuff, too. :)
The friendships that we long for are elusive. It takes two people willing to go places they don’t want to go with someone they determine might not mind the trip. It is rare I think to have really close friends. It is a treasure to find someone you connect with and can bare your soul too. To find someone whose every word you hang on and they to you. To know they find you worthy when they find out the dark about you. To know that the dark does not scare them away or make them think less of you. In some ways the sharing of the dark makes you closer because you become more real to them. To be known and to know and to share is what we want and need. If you find such a person do not let them go.
It takes investment to be a friend like this and it takes willingness to be vulnerable to develop this and I do not think we have time to invest into many people on this level at all. So if you have one or two close friends I think it maxes you out.
“To know they find you worthy when they find out the dark about you. To know that the dark does not scare them away or make them think less of you.”
That.
You are not alone! This pretty much sums up my life right now too, except the church part. We currently do not go to a church building and this is one of the reasons. We have been told that “you need to go to church to fellowship with other believers”. But most of the churches we have been involved in we never made true connections. We would like to find a church that we really connect with. I also find this friendship thing to be the same way with people I know outside of the church building. In my experience people don’t want to make the time to build friendships. I can’t figure out if it is technology, texting and socia media that keeps us from having conversation. Or if we all just change and we need different people (or no one) thru different seasons of life. Whatever it is, it can make the season difficult.
Definitely. “Real” fellowship is unlikely to happen “in” church. We use it as a starting point to pick potential friend candidates out of the crowd. Snort.
We have at least one person over for dinner every week to try to get to know them better because, yeah, never going to get past hi and bye standing around in church “fellowship”.
Our church closed (long story) and I’ve been having trouble getting back into the swing of things to find a new one – especially with three little ones. I’ve always had trouble making friends even as a kid. Too often my memories involve finding out that someone who I thought was a friend was only being friendly on a dare, or didn’t really care. I don’t think you are alone in anyway. I think a lot of us that stand around after church are looking for that deeper connection we are just so unsure how to do it. I’ve had the same problem with homeschooling moms in my area only because we are not homeschooling for religious reasons which they just can’t seem to grasp so it makes it harder to connect with them. My husband made an observation, a rather sad one, over 80% of the friends on my friends list on Facebook are the same as his. Right now I’m just trying to be open to God to figure out where and what I’m supposed to be doing. If people come into my life I figure there is a reason and I’m trying to be more open to the possibilities that as hard as it is to forge a new friendship that perhaps I need to do a bit more work (connecting through email because of the distance) to see if this is a friendship that is going to stand the long haul.
What I’m realizing more and more is that everyone deals with this. Everyone has a hard time making good friends.
I know what you mean about the homeschooling moms thing, too.
It’s been a really, really, really long time since
I’ve had a close, real friend; the kind that
Lingers in your memories and the more time
Passes the more distant the memories become and the less likely it seems to ever
Happen again!
I think about this a lot. My husband is in the
Army (even though he’s a pacifist) and we
Move a lot. I long for that deep friendship
With someone too and I look around and it Seems like it’s just never there!!
I wonder what does God think about this?
What does he see that I’m missing?
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now
And trust me, we’d be friends in real life
Fo sho!!
But this isn’t real life, it’s some weird
Semi-alternate blog world.
You know what’s ironic? In all of our military years, I was never lonely. But it’s not because I had intimate friends. Like the post says, I wast just young and independent enough to not really need friends yet.
I hear you because I’ve been there. Like you, I’ve moved around a lot. We’ve been here 3 years now, and I still long for good, deep relationships. I’m learning that it takes time. Even then, with time, it’s hard. When I look back in my life and think of those good friends I had – I realize they are people I saw and talked to daily. I just don’t have that kind of time now.
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I think that’s why one of my best friends back in Georgia was a young single girl. She could spend copious amounts of time with us.
I so understand this. Some people you just click with…others you don’t. I have ALWAYS struggled with friendships and feeling out of place, and the very close friendships that have truly remained are few and far between. Honestly some of the people I consider my best friends I have never even met and only interact with through FB and blogging…not sure what that says for me… :/
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I completely understand. I have a horrible time getting to know people outside of the superficial and going to church is a painful reminder of that. I think as we get older we tend to shun branching out and taking chances on forming new friendships. We get comfortable and don’t see the need. Makes being a newbie in church very difficult.
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I feel exactly the same way. Totally.
So encouraging to read this and know I’m not the only one. I don’t understand how adults interact. I think you’re supposed to always be polite and keep your cards close to your chest. I am weird and too-honest and vulnerable and it seems to make everyone think it’s sweet that I’m so different and sincere but that they could never be real friends with me. Or my real friends think I’m too straightforward. I don’t know how to be a person sometimes.