It is friday…most people are finished their work week, but I still have the weekend to go. My last day at the retail job is on Saturday and on Sunday I will be doing a few hours of bookkeeping while Doug is at work. I do get to visit with my good friend Pam first though, which will be nice. We are going to have a relaxing evening today (friday) though. Doug is cooking me dinner as he was off all day, and then we will watch the new show Elementary and then it will be time to go in the hot tub. I need a soak in some hot water.
I posted the following partial blog in 2006 about what is a friend to me (my old Louiesowner blog)
1. They listen without judgement
2. They understand and respect my boundaries
3. They don't blow a gasket when they find out I am ******** (I deleted this for now so not to upset anyone)
4. They comfort us when we are sad.
5. They would drop anything if we needed them to be there for us
6. They are willing to try to understand some of our quirky beliefs
7. They agree to disagree if needed.
I still stand by these things. I think these are the main things that are important to me when finding friends. I am not fond of confrontation so I don’t usually bring stuff up and if it is a touchy subject with a friend, we don’t even get near it. Why cause disagreements when you don’t need to. One thing I would add to this is I think friends (local ones) need to actually spend quality time with each other. Not just “church” time, but one on one time. How does one grow close with each other if you never just relax and enjoy each other’s company and bring those walls down? I have said this before and I will say it again…”church” is not the place to grow close, it is a place to worship God/Jesus and to meet with other fellow believers.
For the first 20ish years of our marriage, Doug and I would go out of our way to spend time with people, have dinner parties and just invite ourselves over to people’s places, but after so many years of doing that and people not reciprocating that same attitude, we kinda have given up. Just like a marriage that is broken, you can’t have one person in a relationship when the other isn’t into it. Why should we be the ones that always do the inviting…it makes it seem like we are the only ones thinking about that kind of stuff. So after awhile a person just gives up. As I write this, it suddenly makes me understand more clearly why we want to move away from it all here… we want a new slate and this is one of the reasons. We want to start over with friends. I think we want to try again because obviously we have failed (for the most part) here. I want friends that think of us and think to email (phone is so yesterday) or text us to come over, or go out for coffee. Is that so much to ask? Really, is it so much to ask that someone thinks of us? Oh sure, I am sure people will say “but we are praying for you”… which comes to a pet peeve of mine…
…Prayer (again I think I have posted about this before). I believe it works and I believe it is a way (one of many) to communicate with God/Jesus. But I don’t believe it should be a way to wash our hands of the responsibility of friends to physically support each other. I am not saying we have to do everything that we prayer for, for example, we pray for a friend to get a job, but we don’t offer them a job, that isn’t possible usually. I think we do have to stand with our friends if they are down. If someone is down, what do they need? Usually some company, someone to just laugh with, or maybe play a video game with. Not complicated things, but basic things. Yes prayer works too, but we need to follow up that prayer with action.
Our bible study is going to do a thing on prayer…sigh…yes, let’s study how to pray, when to pray, why to pray, bla bla bla bla. Is prayer that complicated? I never knew it was that complicated… I thought it was fairly easy… talk to God/Jesus about our problems, bring up our friends in prayer to him, etc. Then get up off your knees and knock on your friends door and ask if they need anything? Does that seem complicated? Nope, not to me, but apparently we have to “study” it. Sigh… have I mentioned I am not a “church” person?? LOL. Now for those people who need to learn more about it, I think that is just fine. We all love to learn about different things and maybe some people need to learn more about how prayer works, but I just don’t get it. I won’t judge others on why they want to learn what they want to learn, but is it ok if I think it just makes it all too complicated? I am more than happy to live in my little simple world where me and God chat about things and when I think someone needs prayer, I just say it.
I would like to hear God a little better though, so I will keep focusing on what I should be listening too and hopefully things will become clearer. I will pray for that and for those of you out there that believe in prayer, feel free to pray for me, because again, I do believe in prayer, I just believe it comes hand in hand with action.