Friend or Foe

I want to share with you my experiences with friends. Now just a little back story. I am not a very outgoing person. I never had a large group of friends growing up. I mostly had 2-3 relatively good friends. High school was not the "best time" of my life in any way, other than that's where I met my husband. My best friend went to a different school and my friends from elementary school abandoned me in high school. I was not a cheerleader, didn't get into school politics or the newspaper. I was lucky to get B's and C's. Not popular in any way. My friends were the outcasts, who didn't fit in anywhere.

I had a friend who only wanted to be around me if her other friends were busy. I clung to any amount of time she was willing to spend with me. I let her walk all over me. One day she decided that I didn't "need" her anymore because I had a boyfriend and there was another girl who "needed" her more. Wait? What? You're dumping me because I'm not needy? Are you kidding? O.K.
I also had a friend who only spoke to me when she was having boyfriend troubles.
I believe this was the beginning of my social anxiety. (never a medical diagnosis, but non-the-less real) 
I started guarding my heart. Aside from my husband and my best friend I really didn't socialize. Friends to me meant heartache. 

Fast forward....Married with children. Uh oh! I have to venture out of my comfort zone and speak to people. Still no real friends, just parents of my daughters friends. Some of them were nice, some were not friend material. I still had that social awkwardness.
Birthday parties were agonizing if I had to stay.

One day a neighbor invited me to go with her to an aerobics class. They had child care and she was taking her kids with her. I went. I hated exercise but I enjoyed the music that was being played and the message the instructor spoke of during it. This is where I became a Christian. 
I thought I had found a place to feel safe. Most of the women were Christian. They invited me to bible studies and meetings. That quickly turned. Don't get me wrong, becoming a Christian was the best thing I've ever done. The women of this group I joined, were not very encouraging for a new believer and made me feel guilty about everything. As if God wouldn't accept me if I didn't do things their way. O.K. good bye to another group of people I thought were my friends. Alone again.
Since then I found an amazing church and some wonderful people to call my brothers and sisters.

When we returned from Boston, I learned that my husband had made some new friends at church. They became our best friends. for almost 10 years we were inseparable. I felt like I had finally found a true group of people to call family. We would raise our kids together. We went through a lot as a group. Cancer, runaway kids, infidelity, and other stuff. Well the group started to get smaller. Some of my friends started doing things I couldn't be part of so they would leave us out and then have secrets. 
For about the last 2 years, I was hanging on to a dead friendship. I couldn't accept that I had failed again, not after this long. I felt hurt and mad. I tried everything to keep this friendship alive, only to be ignored. It felt like a death in the family. I mourned the passing of this relationship for a long time. Tried to resurrect it several times. Tried to figure out what I had done wrong. My family told me to just be done already, that it was bringing me down. I just couldn't do it. Until one day it hit me. After I had to cancel plans to meet for coffee, due to car trouble, I didn't heard from this friend again. I realized that I was in a one-sided friendship. I cared more than she did. One sided friendships are no friendships at all. 

If you have any one in your life that only brings you down, you need to rethink the reasons you're holding on. My reason was that I couldn't believe after all we'd been through together it was just over. I am still working through it.

This is where I will leave you. I hope you will get something out of my experiences. I don't want to bore you. I want to encourage you. I will always end these posts with this reminder...
ALWAYS KEEP FIGHTING...Jared Padalecki, inspired.

Phil4:13 "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."