Realistic Friendship Goals

With all of the #friendshipgoals and #squadgoals out there, it's hard to determine what real friendship looks like and how to discern who your real friends are. I personally have struggled with the notion of friendship. I have had not so great friends and I have been a not so great friend and at 23, I still do not know everything about friendship. So how do we navigate through our friendships and have realistic #friendshipgoals? One thing I had to learn was to let go of people bondage. For those who don't know, people bondage is when you are literally enslaved to what people think and say about you. I lived majority of my life as a follower. I latched onto certain people because I did not have an identity of my own. I did whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. I had to rid myself of the control other people had over me in order to find my identity and begin to develop true and realistic friendships. 

When I first got saved, I had an unhealthy expectation and belief that I would immediately have plenty of friends and we would be super close. At the same time, I wasn't willing to go out and make those friends because of my own uncomfortability with making new friends. Both those ways of thinking were not realistic. I wasn't going to magically come up with a bunch of close friends and if I were going to have friends, I would have to put in the work and make them. It was a reality check for me and the way I was used to formulating relationships. 

I believe many people have unhealthy expectations of friendships which actually can harm the relationship. One thing I had to understand was that I was not going to be best friends with every person in my community. I had to understand that there are different levels of friendship and that is TOTALLY OK! I had to understand that some friends are going to be seasonal friends and some friends are going to be lifetime friends. Some people I am only going to socialize with at church functions and some people I will have closer bonds with and that is ok. 

So how do I apply these things to my life you ask? Well number one, I have found that asking the Lord to make me more comfortable with approaching people and getting to know them has helped A LOT! God is the only explanation for how I have formed relationships with people because I am extremely introverted. Also, when I do meet new people I try not to have expectations for our relationship. This can be really hard for me because I like to control situations and know the ending so that I can plan and prepare for it. So I try REALLY hard to go with the flow of the relationship and see what God has in store for the friendship.

I am definitely working on this daily because relationships are hard especially when you're trying to navigate them and figure out your own life at the same time. But as a 20 something year old I'm here to tell you that it's ok to not have everything figured out and you will continue to meet friends until the day you die. So just take every opportunity you have to meet someone as a new one and have no expectations. This is how you build your own #friendshipgoals.

See you next time and make sure you connect with me. I would love to hear from you!