-255 Encouragement?

Image by Steven Depolo

I've been pondering this for the past few weeks. Who do you go to for encouragement or feedback whether it be to share an achievement or to get some positive words about something you've created or written? Do you have just one or two people that you can go to or do you spread yourself out thinly so not to become a 'needy single' burden on others?

I've noticed a big shift with my close friends lately in the encouragement department and I'm not sure what to make of it or how to compensate for it.

As I've shared previously Bestest Bud and I have been friends for more than 12 years and The Princess & The Crazy Med Student for just over 10. I really value our friendship and have appreciated in the past the fact that we've been able to go for a few months without catching up and then when we do get together we just talk for hours about everything that's important. Over the past few years, with the introduction of Facebook and Skype we've chatted a lot more frequently and thus hung out a fair bit more.

But now all of them are married and most have kids. Their focus, rightly, is elsewhere. There have been a couple of times lately I've shared something I've written ( from another blog that I write for Church ) or something else and while I have received great encouragement from other people, my closest friends have remained silent.

Now it's not like any of them are verbally encouraging people to start with. I did try to give them the heads up though on our holiday over New Years when we were talking about love languages and it came up that mine was 'Words of Affirmation' not 'Gifts' like at least one of them seem to think. I mean gifts are nice and all and just because I give thoughtful gifts to my friends doesn't mean that that's what I need...anyway....

But they used to be a lot better about making sure we encouraged each other and made each other feel valued and special.

I'm wonder if the decline in this is because they are married and seek that encouragement from their husbands now and don't feel they need to seek it from their friends anymore for the most part? Perhaps then 'forgetting' that their lone single friend in this group doesn't have this immediate support living in the same house and is still needing some encouragement every now and then.....I know it's an easy out to 'blame' this on the fact they are married, I mean I could be very likely be annoying the you know what out of them at the moment and they don't wish to comment on my blog post where I kinda opened myself up to world about being single......

Anyway, I am still pondering this one. I'm not losing sleep over it. I think I would like my own 'in house encourager' ( which I know comes with a free set of 'Kick me up the butt sometimes steak knives' ) - lol - but I don't care!

Will have to also write a blog post on hanging out with The Non Bachelor in the next couple of days too. I just don't know how to process it just yet. I'm not sure what God is doing. Restoration I think. But not in that way. In a new way.

Sometimes just writing this blog and getting some feedback in my comments of you all is 'in house' enough - for now ;)

xMiss365

-350 The introduction that healed my heart

Photo by Michal Marcol

I've been friends with Bestest Bud for almost 12 years now and over that time our friendship has been pretty stable. There have been some tough times but we've managed to work around these issues by not talking about them. Lol. 

Sounds wrong and in a lot of ways it is but over the years I've learned to respect her need not to talk about stuff that she is dealing with until after she has worked it through and tried not to confront her over dips in our friendship or when I've been hurt. 

Until recently it's worked because I've been able to share with other people or worked out other ways to work through it but it became apparent this year that God would have no more of that and made me deal with my fear of telling people they had hurt me just in case they picked up and walked away. I just don't feel safe. 

Unfortunately Bestest Bud has been part of the work issue that I'm not going into detail about she's been caught in the middle and I've agonised for so long and felt so guilty for what I could potentially I could say to her if I unbuttoned my lips that I've been somewhat guarded when we have hung out. 

Sadly she has been going through her own issues ( that I didn't know about ) and the distance between us has widened. 

When you look at the 5 Love Languages ( quiz for Singles follow the link but remember to come back ! ) I am quite firmly in the Quality Time and Words of Affirmation category as the two aspects that I respond best to. Again, Quality Time is not something she could give me ( due to circumstances I didn't know about ) and she is not a big Words of Affirmation person ( which I've always known and I've never expected her to be different ) so I've felt the difference in our friendship deeply. After a lot of Prayer and support ( The Princess and Crazy Med Student have been amazing yet caught in the middle of my maddness and sadness but have been wonderful ) we have hung out a bit, had a few honest chats and things are a lot better than they were. It feels as if a cool breeze had been blown into our friendship and although there are still things I wished I could say about how sad I feel about the changes and how I wasn't sure about where things stood between us and my relationship with her kids, things were pretty ok. 

Today a Southerly blew through without her realising it and I feel valued. All because someone introduced us to each other. It wasn't that she acknowledged to this group of teachers that we work with that we were former flatmates or that we have known each other for almost 12 years or have worked together before it was the fact that after a bit of chat and someone said something along the lines of "You guys must know each other well then" she replied with;

"Well yes. She was there for the birth of my two kids."

And just like that I felt valued. She didn't have to volunteer that information. We were at work. We'd established that we were friends, we had been flatmates etc. And we both laughed and said it was nice to be introduced to each other as it hadn't happened in a long, long time. 

Just like that my heart was healed. My lingering questions about the current status of our friendship had been answered and although I know Bestest Bud and I ( and Bonsai Master, Polly Pocket & Such a Boy ) will be lifelong friends sometimes hearing the importance of your friendship established like that in a public way is exactly what can heal a heart that has been sad and lonely. 


Value your friends. Someone prayed for a friend for Bestest Bud all those years ago, it turned out to be me if God can bless me with a friend in this way not long after The Real Ex and I broke up I just have to pray that my prayers and the prayers of others for a Mr365 will happen in the most perfect, wonderful, God amazing way - soon ! :)


xMiss365