Am I the only one that seems to have a limit on friendships?
That may sound bad or come across funny but think about it…..
How many friends do you have? At what level or tier of support would you say those friendships are?
You know, your tier 1 support is lunch and the occasional encouragement. Your tier two support is hey can you help me out with my kids while I go sign my divorce papers so they don’t see the bloody mess I’ll be later.
I think we all have those friends that are lunch companions and hey how are the kids, but how many of them do you have?
I Have 200 and some odd folks as friends on Facebook and I can honestly say that I don’t really know half of them. I have 170 some odd followers on twitter and I can say that I respond or relate to less than half. Most of the people I “social network” with I go to church with, some I went to high school with, while others might speak something into my life. How may of these people do I really know?
I did a count, and other than my wife, and my brothers’ family the count came out to 7 people. Seven people know me and I know them at a level higher than “hey how’s it going, how are the kids?”
What’s sad is I called one of them up the other day and had to ask him if we “broke-up”. My wife said that we had some kinda “bromance” going on.
Is it a time issue? Is it an issue of I can only have a few friends at a time? Or do you just loose interest in friendships or do interests change?
I have friends that I use to hang with everyday but after I got married, that stopped.
I use to have friends that I fished and hunted with every weekend but after I changed jobs and moved that stopped.
My point to this post is not to try and down the number of friendships someone might have, I guess my point is what are you doing with those friendships?
Are we intentional enough with our time to cultivate existing friendships and still grow more? Some one told me the other day that when your garden gets to big to tend by yourself your going to have weeds. Does that mean we should cull some of our friends?
A little story for you and I’ll quit. I play Mafia Wars on Facebook, I’m not sure why yet. At any rate, I made a friend on Facebook because of Mafia Wars that lives here in Decatur. I don’t know her, I’ve never met her. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m a freak because I have invited her to church and told her we meet at a movie theater, but you know, I think she might come…..
Friendships are just like the other relationships in our lives. They must be cultivated and tended to in order for them to continue to grow. Yes, I do believe that there is a time issue sometimes. However, I believe some of us (if not most of us) have acquaintances and very few real friends. Real friends are much different than those who we occasionally have a quick banter with (“Hi, how are you? How are the kids? etc…). Real friends are those with whom you may not have a lot of contact with at times but when you do it is genuine, caring, and you step back into each others’ lives as if you’ve never left. Real friends are also those whom you pray for each time they come into your mind. It’s not about the number, really. It’s about the quality (or the level as you put it).
Just my thoughts… nice post.
To paraphrase Mark Driscoll (the cussing preacher): Americans have everything except real relationships. The church has a great opportunity to be a true friend to all the truly friendless people out there. But for the most part Christians want to keep a distance. I don’t think anything is more Christlike than being a friend to someone who doesn’t meet your “standards” if you think about it.