What About Your Friends?

"Be not deceived, bad company corrupts good morals" 1 Corinthians 15:33

When I was growing up in elementary and junior high, I had a hard time finding good friends. At that age, it was more important to me to be friends with someone cool, pretty, or popular, then someone kind, honest, and with good morals. I remember getting in several arguments with my mother about the friends I chose to spend time with. I can still hear her saying “I don’t want you hanging out with that girl. She’s a bad influence on you. You are not allowed to go and spend time with her this weekend. NO!” I would be so livid at my mother, thinking “you can’t pick who my friends are! You don’t know anything! You are sooo mean mom!” Well thank God for my mother. I have carried those high standards through to my adult life, and I am now surrounded by the most genuine, honest, stand-up, life-long girlfriends a girl could ever ask for.  You see, when I was younger I thought it was more important to have 100 “friends” to have fun with and be seen with, because I thought it would make my life seem more fun and fulfilling. As I got older, I realized it truly is quality over quantity, and that the friends you choose to surround yourself with really does play a major role in your future success and quality of life.

Time is such a precious commodity in our lives. We have barely enough time to eat and sleep properly, let alone spend any quality time with our friends. Time is valuable. Time is a gift you can give to someone. Who are you spending your time with? Who do you value in your life? Apart from spending time with my husband and family, I personally choose to spend my spare time nurturing those friendships that continue to grow and blossom, with those friends that are for life.

The old saying is true, people do come into your life for either a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Your future happiness and quality of life strongly rely on your ability to decipher what person fits into which place in your life. I’ve spent many unfortunate years hanging desperately onto partners that were only there for a particular reason (to learn). I’ve also enjoyed summers and winters and entire school-years with wonderful friends that were placed in my life for a short season. Think carefully about who are your LIFETIME people, and chose to prioritize your time with them.

Just as relationships can be toxic and unhealthy, so can friendships. Friendships are relationships just like any other. They are a two-way street, and involve trust, compromise, understanding, honesty, and integrity. Friendships are give and take. Ideally, friendships are a gift from God, given to help you grow, to pick you up when you are weak, to cheer you on when you are rising, to build your character.  Hanging onto unhealthy friendships can cause negative impact on your life. They may hold you back from growing and excelling, they stunt your growth. They may criticize or make fun of you as you make positive changes in your life. When a friendship becomes one-sided, or unhealthy in any way, have the courage to realize that taking a step away and creating boundaries and distance is a very wise decision.

I’ve heard of several instances of people that were on a path to healing from past addictions. As they got clean, they often lost many friends, and found themselves lonely. The friends they had while struggling with addictions no longer had anything in common with them as they went clean. Sometimes, those friends would even discourage them from quitting, and put pressure on them to have “just one more” and to lighten up. The results of keeping these friendships are obvious. In my case personally, as I got older and stronger in my faith, I had firmly in place a set of moral codes and standards that I chose not to sway from. It became crucial to me to surround myself only with people that would hold me accountable to those morals – and not lead me in the other direction.  I had a tough job of establishing boundaries and distance to those people that I felt were unhealthy for me to spend time with, those that would possibly lead me astray, or into a situation that is tempting and against what I now morally allow into my life.

With all of this being said, please take to heart that it does not mean you should be rude to people that were once your friends, or to be disrespectful or unloving in any way to someone who has different beliefs than you. We are called to be the Light of the world, and to love your neighbour! It’s not wrong to hang out with people that are on a bad path, that need a good friend, and to be a positive influence in their life. Rather, it’s more important to have the awareness of what sort of role people are playing in your life, and to maintain your boundaries, and choose how you spend your time wisely.

I cannot say enough about the quality of friends I have in my life. A very small group of women, that have seen me through many of life’s battles. They shared countless fun times with me, they have picked me up off the ground and dusted me off, they challenged me, they helped me to grow, they taught me things about myself and about life, they made me a stronger more patient and compassionate person, they were my biggest supporters when I stepped out into my faith, and they were there wiping tears of joy at my wedding when I moved forward into the next stage of my life. My girlfriends are for a lifetime. And each one has the hugest place in my heart and my life. There is nothing I would not do for my friends. Thank you girls, you know who you are, I love you dearly.

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”  - William Shakespeare

“Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or
walk in the way of evil men. Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn
from it and go on your way.” Proverbs 4:14-15 NIV