Nourishing hearts as faithfully as we nourish our tables.
Welcome to Season & Savor Sunday — because feeding our bodies is not enough.
Don’t waste the pain, and don’t waste the people.
We have spent the last two weeks talking about why friendship matters and what it actually looks like to show up for one another. Today, I want to close this series with three things that have taken me the longest to learn: do not judge too quickly, hold your friendships with open hands, and trust that God does not waste a single one of them.
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT)
The Friends You Almost Missed
I am going to be honest with you. I have judged people. I sized someone up in the first five minutes and decided she wasn’t my kind of person. Too put together. A little standoffish. Probably not worth the effort.
And I have been wrong. Embarrassingly, repeatedly wrong.
When my boys were young, I joined a mom’s group, and there was a woman there who seemed to have it all together. Outspoken, beautiful, confident. I quietly wrote her off as a bit snobby and moved on. But somewhere along the way we ended up going out for coffee, just the two of us, and I heard her. Really heard her.
She had just lost a pregnancy. She was struggling with young toddlers. She had met and married later in life, like me. And Jesus had changed her life in ways that made her heart absolutely beautiful. I sat across from her, thinking, we are more alike than I ever imagined.
That has happened to me more times than I can count. Women I initially read as unfriendly, who turned out to be shy. Women who seemed too much had simply had a terrible day when we first met. Women, I was certain I had nothing in common with, who became some of my closest friends.
Do not let a wrong first impression keep someone out who was meant to be there.
“The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT)
Push back on your first impressions. Get coffee. Ask questions. Listen. You might just find your people in the most unexpected places. Keep your heart tender and open.
The Friends Who Are Nothing Like You
I want to say one more thing about unexpected friendships, because I think we can accidentally pigeonhole ourselves here.
Some of my friends are nothing like me. Different upbringings, different circles, different views on things. And I count them among my dearest. Friendship does not require identical lives or identical opinions. It requires genuine care, a willingness to listen, and enough respect to let someone be who they are without needing them to be more like you.
Do not build a friendship circle that is just a mirror. You will miss so much. I have missed so much, I’m still learning this!
The Friends Who Were Meant for a Season
“A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.”
Proverbs 17:17 (NLT)
Some friendships are for a lifetime. Some are for a season. And I have come to believe, with my whole heart, that God is intentional about both.
Years ago, I had a friend going through a devastating divorce from an abusive relationship. I had seen some signs early on and gently tried to share my concerns, but she was not ready to hear them, and that is okay. I could not make her choices for her. What I could do was show up, and I did. She joined ski patrol with me and we drove up to the mountains together almost every weekend. We had fun. We made memories.
But over time I started feeling uncomfortable with some of the directions things were going. I prayed about it, genuinely prayed, and I felt a real peace that it was time for me to take a step back. When she reached out, I did not make excuses or disappear. I was gently honest about shifts I needed to make in my own life. We stayed in touch at a distance. Christmas cards, that sort of thing. We had both moved into new seasons.
She passed away from cancer a few years ago. And after she died, her husband called me to tell me that she had considered me one of her best friends.
I will not pretend that it did not wreck me a little. But here is what I want you to hear: I did not feel guilty. She did not feel abandoned, she had a beautiful marriage with her best friend. We had both moved on, naturally and without bitterness, into the seasons God had for us. The friendship had done what it was meant to do.
I will also be honest that through the years, when I was single longer than most of my friends, a lot of those married friends stopped reaching out. I understood it, mostly. But did it hurt sometimes? One hundred percent. It took my own counseling and learning to grieve relational losses to finally let that hurt and guilt go. And I did let it go. I refuse to let old wounds keep me from opening my hands to new friendships.
“He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3 (NLT)
I want to pause here for just a moment. What I am describing is the natural ebb and flow of healthy friendships. If you are in a friendship or any relationship where you are being abused or harmed in any way, that is not a season to simply step back from gracefully. You deserve safety, and there are people who can help. Please talk to someone you trust.
Don’t Waste the Pain, Don’t Waste the People
Chuck Swindoll says it over and over: don’t waste the pain. I have carried that with me for years and I believe it applies to friendship as much as anything else in life.
I do not look back on a single friendship in my life, not even the ones that cost me something, as a waste. Every one of them taught me something. About myself, about grace, about what it means to really show up. Will people hurt you? Yes. Absolutely yes. And I am certain I have hurt friends too, because I am human and far from perfect.
But do I let those wounds keep me from investing in new friendships? Not on your life.
Our Creator God does not waste a thing. Not a season, not a loss, not a hard conversation, not even a wrong first impression over coffee. He is working in all of it, shaping us, softening us, and sending us exactly the people we need for exactly the season we are in.
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God.”
Romans 8:28 (NLT)
So go get coffee with someone you have been too quick to write off. Say yes to the walk. Send the cardigan (see part 2). Hold your friendships with open hands and trust the One who brought them to you in the first place.
He knows what He is doing.
Closing thought: Thank you for walking through this little friendship series with me. It has been one of my favorite things I have written in a long time, probably because it is so close to my heart. If any part of these three posts stirred something in you, I would love to hear about it. And if you are sitting with a friendship right now that you are not sure what to do with, whether to lean in or step back or just show up, I hope you felt a little less alone reading this. You were made for relationship. Go live like it.
~ With grace at the table, and beyond
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