Permanent Markers by Janel Breitenstein

Author:Janel Breitenstein [Breitenstein, Janel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736984812
Publisher: HarvestHouse
Published: 2021-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

What If Friendships Are the One Choice We Have?

The need for community hits me like a tennis shoe between the eyes because in some of the scariest and darkest times of my life, I’ve found myself shutting down and shutting out. Isolation honestly felt safer than needing others, than exposing myself to judgment or rejection or misunderstanding. (If we do this, do our kids get the idea we should pretend friendship?)

Sometimes the effort toward friendship feels herculean. I’ve even been guilty of offering just enough of an appearance of authenticity—a “curated imperfection.” What if our facades and efforts to keep it all together or appear need-free contribute to our own implosion? With all the uncontrollable factors in our lives, what if defeating isolation is the one choice we do have in staying healthy?

A year ago, in a cancer scare with our son Will, the gravitas of the situation and the precious nature of my grief seemed to settle themselves on my lips. In a season of dire stress, I didn’t feel I could risk someone misunderstanding the sacredness of my grief—the private intricacies and particular, searing losses. But I often associate my needs with considerable shame, so asking for help felt like adding a stone atop the boulder grinding my face into the ground. But John kept telling me, “We want to walk this road in community.”

When I don’t think I need others, when I choose aloneness because I think I’m better off or safer being independent, I choose against God’s design of a whole body.

One of Jesus’s final prayers for his people before his death envisioned a radical opposite of cultural isolation: “I pray…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21).

Becoming one requires our presence. Authors John and Stasi Eldredge note, “The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift. To come—unguarded, undistracted—and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with at that moment. When we offer our unguarded presence, we live like Jesus.”4 Returning from Uganda, I was stricken that people now seemed so hungry for someone to listen to them. We feel a deep longing for people to share our stories with, depend on, and feel known by. As a culture, we are slowly starving. And on this trajectory, our kids are headed for a future even more isolated.

In Genesis 2:25, God sets an ideal of marriage that is naked and unashamed. If community is in concentric circles, with marriage being one of those most intimate circles in the center, isn’t there an element of our relationships that longs to be naked-faced, naked-hearted, just-as-I-am…and finally be unashamed? Finally be accepted as we are, embarrassing needs and all? Dependent, and okay with that?

So what if we lived differently? More vulnerably? More—dare I say—intrusively?

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