It’s Not About You
My Friend,
I know last week’s letter was poetic, contorted, and self-centered. This journey is supposed to be about you, not me. That being said, I won’t apologize for introducing my own pain into your story. The fact is, the foundation of true friendship is sharing. Sharing laughs. Sharing victories. Sharing fears. And sharing trauma.
Friendship is weird. I don’t mean that having friends is weird. I mean the concept itself is strange. You take a person who would otherwise be a stranger, and you slowly blend your life with their’s until you reach a point where the fullness of your joy is dependent on their’s. It’s equal parts glorious and condemning.
If you’re reading this letter, I’m willing to bet you know the condemnation side of friendship full well. You know what it feels like to have your heart cut out of your chest by the sharp knife of a broken bond. To watch someone who once held your most sacred secrets walk away forever. Or maybe they didn’t walk away. Maybe their breath was stolen from their body and you didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. Maybe you intended to remain as one for the rest of your days, but the hell-bound depravity of this world schemed to darken the extent of those days.
Whatever the case may be, you’re alone now. Or, at least, it feels like you are more often than it doesn’t.
How do I know this?
Because I used to walk in the shoes on your feet. I broke them in.
But then, one day, someone walked into my life, who, for a reason I’ll never fully understand, was adamant about loving me the way I was created to be loved. For a while, I didn’t know how to respond to it. My story proved I shouldn’t trust anyone, so I tried pushing her away. But every time I pushed, she pressed in even harder. And as new tragedies struck my world, she started showing up, never asking for anything in return. She just wanted to love me.
Years later, after enduring some of the darkest nights as a result of choosing to love me, she’s still here. I’ve never known another like her.
Why am I telling you this? It’s simple:
Sometimes, when the sun goes down and life becomes nothing more than a bottomless pit of meaningless suffering, all you need is one person to care about you. One person to assure you that, though the sun’s gone to sleep for a little while, when the lights of the night sky come to shine on the billions of souls who roam this world, there will always be a home for you next to the brightest One of them all.
My best friend taught me that.
Both my best friend on this side of heaven, and the One who created me on the other side.
And now, I’m going to teach you.
The first thing you need to know about true friendship is that YOU need to be a faithful friend if you ever want to have one. You need to be selfless, honest, brutal, joyous, loving, protecting, and most of all: concerned about who they are as a person, and not what they can do for you.
It’s not about getting ahead by knowing them.
Or filling a void inside yourself with their presence—whether it be affirmation, confidence, sexual fulfillment, or the like.
It’s not about you.
It’s about them.
I know this isn’t a popular idea in the world we live in. But, frankly, that’s why no one has real friends anymore. That’s why marriages don’t last, and best friends inevitably become “people we used to know”. Few are willing to live a life that extends beyond themselves. To love sacrificially. And with unabated commitment.
But you, my friend, were created to live in the light for the sake of other people, and to know the meaning of commitment and love.
Starting today, choose to stop living solely for the concern of yourself. This is one of the most essential decisions you must make in order to find healing.
Until next week,
