What a Friend We Have in Jesus

My children recently wrapped up the school year and we are all breathing a deep sigh of relief.  Lunchboxes have been cleaned and stowed away. Backpacks have been emptied and laundered. Summer has officially begun. My daughter Providence concluded sixth grade and my son Justice, third grade. Between the two of them, they faced obstacles of all kinds: academic, mental health, and social. While it took a village of teachers, counselors, and family to help them navigate it all, in the end, it’s their friends that encouraged them to persevere. 

Providence and Justice learned the hard way that there’s more to friendship than meets the eye. They each felt the sting of betrayal and were on the receiving end of unkind words more than a few times. They woke up to the harsh realization that not everyone is as kind as they seem. They got caught between feuding friends and were often misunderstood. I held their tears of frustration and rejection over and over again. But out of the rough and unpredictable social terrain of elementary school, true friends made themselves known. This year my kids found their people. 

Providence found friends who respected her principles and didn’t ask her to take sides. She wisely walked away from peers who were petty and unforgiving. The girls she surrounded herself with in the end were those who shared her heart for inclusivity, showed compassion, and carried themselves with the utmost grace. Her people are the friends who make her cry tears of laughter and give her a safe space to be herself. All year long Providence carried around the weight of perfectionism, a pressure to please and perform with self-set standards she could never meet. Her people were the only ones with whom she could unload that weight. I asked her once, “When do you feel like you’re the truest, best version of yourself?” She thought about it for a moment before answering, “When I’m with my friends.” 

I wish I could say I helped her navigate the ins and outs of sixth-grade social politics, but the truth is, I couldn’t. Providence doesn’t take well to my confrontational approach to conflict, and she shouldn’t. It’s not how God designed her. My “fix it and forget it” attitude did little to assuage her heart’s desire to mediate and please her peers. I didn’t always understand her slow, meditated approach to her problems, but God did.

Unlike his sister, Justice didn’t have a circle of friends this year, so much as he had one best friend. The relationships he had with most of his peers were fragile as piecrusts, easily made, and easily broken, but his friendship with William remained a constant. In William, Justice found a friend who wasn’t scared off by his big emotions, a friend who forgave easily and shared his love for Broadway tunes and choreographed dancing. The other boys in their class would race out to play football or soccer during recess, “But William and I are weird and we like being weird together,” Justice would say. “He’s my only friend, but he’s my best friend.” 

I shared with Justice’s counselor, “William is great, but I want Justice to have more options, more than just one good friend.” I explained that my husband and I had offered to teach Justice how to play football or soccer like his other male classmates so he could feel confident joining their play during recess, but Justice had no interest. “That’s because those other boys aren’t his people,” the counselor responded. “It sounds to me like William is his person, and he only needs one.” I was reminded of Proverbs 18:24 which says, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother,”(NIV) and I thanked God for Justice’s one true friend.

I’m learning as a mom, not to impose my method of pursuing and maintaining friendships on my kids. God has uniquely wired each of us and placed specific needs in our hearts that can only be met in relationships He calls us to. Engaging friends, new or old, looks different for me than it does for my children. I am extroverted, a non-people pleaser, the biggest personality in the room, and I have a quick wit that can save any awkward conversation. But I have not always carried myself with such confidence. I struggled through those early years just like Providence and Justice are struggling now. I have over forty years of life experience, wisdom gleaned from countless relationships that have flourished and fizzled. Allowing my children to learn through trial and error, to navigate hurt feelings and insecurities just as I did, will ensure they too grow up to sustain healthy, godly friendships. They are figuring out who they are and what they need. They are learning how their strengths and weaknesses both benefit and hurt their relationships. Whether they need one friend or dozens isn’t for me to say.

My desire to protect Providence and Justice is in a constant tug of war with my desire to see them grow and mature outside their comfort zone. I want them to be brave at the lunch table and bold on the playground, but I desperately want their hearts to stay safe from rejection. Ultimately it’s God, not me, who guides them. He knows their hearts better than I ever could, and He prepares them for the social gauntlet of each new season. When my son or daughter shares with me a social struggle their navigating, the unsolicited advice rears up all too easily. It’s tempting to tell them what I think they should do, regaling them with a story of how I handled such situations when I was their age. But if I really want to help them foster confidence and godly relationships, I need to point them to Jesus. To discern what their hearts need, I must turn them to the heart of God.

Together we can dive into His word and discover what He has to say about friendship. What can we learn from the relationships of David and Jonathan? Moses and Aaron? Ruth and Naomi? Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego? Jesus and His disciples? Let’s look at the varying personalities and spiritual gifts between these friends. Where can we see ourselves? How did God use them to serve and encourage each other? No two friendships looked the same, and not all had easy beginnings. Conflict ensued, and outside circumstances threatened to separate them, but their love for one another endured. In pointing my kids to the Bible I am reassuring them that friendship and all that comes with it are nothing new God. I am also reassuring them the friend they have in Jesus trumps any earthly friendships they may or may not have. Jesus never fails us. Jesus never rejects us, betrays us, or speaks unkind words to us. No, He shows up for us, delights in us, sings over us, and He is always eager to hear from us. He accepts us just as we are. We don’t ever need to “fit in” with Him. He looks forward to spending time with us every day. When we have Jesus, we are never alone.

As we prepare for another new school year this fall, I am watching Providence and Justice mature and thrive in the way they approach friendships. Justice is finally finding his “tribe,” a small but supportive group of boys who share his passion for martial arts. He’s striking up conversations with peers at summer camps. All the while he’s maintaining his close-knit bond with William, his anchor and safe place. When he steps into his new classroom I pray he keeps his heart open to extend friendship to those who feel insecure, different, and alone as he often does. I trust that as he matures so will his relationships, and he’ll learn to love who God’s made Him to be. Providence is finding value in friendships with those who share her flourishing faith. She worships alongside her peers at church and she celebrated her recent baptism with a tight-knit community of church friends. At the same time, her boldness in sharing Jesus is inspiring. She shows no fear in sharing the gospel and inviting her school friends to join her at church youth group. She is moving gracefully between both groups of friends, gently weaving threads between the two.

My kids have found their people but their friendships are ever-evolving. Their people may not be the same this year as they were last year, or even a year from now. There will be both grief and relief in that truth. We’ve heard the saying, “Find your tribe and hold them close,” but I say find your people and hold them with open hands. Remember that relationships are blessings but they’re fluid. People change and so do we. What we gain from friendships and what we offer them varies from person to person, season to season. But oh what a friend we have in Jesus. He does not change like shifting shadows. He is ever faithful, our constant companion.