Let's Get Real!

Friendship for Grown-ups

chapter 10

Let's Get Real

Friendship is about risk, 

it is about love, 

it is about being willing to be transparent;

even when it means that all of your imperfections will sure to be under the spotlight.

I think this chapter encourages us to take down our self imposed walls and to let others see us for who we really are.  It also gives us a new liberty some of us may not have yet known; to speak what is on our hearts.  Lisa recommends of course, that we do this in confines of a *safe* friendship.

She also reminds us that if our friends (or those around us) see us as perfect, that then we miss the opportunity to have authentic friendship occur.  The whole of it is in this;  

"intimacy = into-me-see."

Once we arrive in a safe friendship we are encouraged to ask questions that will lead to a more open friendship and questions that will allow ourselves to take inventory of *us* and things that might need to be tweaked or corrected in our lives (you know, like the things that might be keeping us from deep intimate friendships in the first place.) The questions might look like these~

What do I do that makes you want to be my friend?

What do I do that keeps me from being that friend to you?

What do you see that you might warn me about in *me?*

Yikes, those questions down-right scare me right now.  Where I am standing, still with a shattered heart, I am not sure I have the courage to ask those risky type of questions.

Lisa tells us in closing to take the plunge into authentic, honest to goodness friendship.  She leaves us hanging on the words that in the next chapter she will help us to learn how to keep our friendships intact after we stir up such honest conversations between us. Remember, a real friend listens and is haven of safety and love for their friend.

Hmm, maybe by next week I will be ready ;-)

How about you?

 

**two more chapters to go and then we are finished.  

Just want you to know I found another really helpful book to follow this book up with, it is called

In Search of Significance 

by Robert S. McGee

I stumbled (if you believe in stumbling, which I do not ;-)  upon it in a local second hand shop (so mine comes prehighlighted).  What drew me to it was my true wrestling with my own significance. Well, that and on the front cover in bold writing it says, 

" The Search for Significance should be read by every Christian." Billy Graham.

I started reading it and am very very thankful for finding it in such a time as this. 

I share it with you, my friends, in hoping you too will find healing and hope.