Friendship is risky, costly. Friendship is meant to provide a refuge from loneliness, and a respite from self-criticism and the critique of a never-satisfied world. Friendship is a relationship of mutual enjoyment. It is a place where our hearts don’t have to work quite so hard to be heard and understood and accepted. Friendship is supposed to offer a taste of what is coming when our souls will be fully known and completely at rest.
But just a taste. I have found that the people I love and who love me deeply are not able to satisfy my insatiable soul in a lasting way. But man, have I wanted them to. “Fill me!” I’ve cried. “Satisfy me!” John has tried to fill me. Friends have tried to fill me. And their offerings have been marvelous. But never enough. I have a leak. Really, it’s a break in the pipe, and aware of my own brokenness, I have tried to hide it and get other people to tend it. It hasn’t worked. My demanding has backfired. I have learned the hard way—and just about everything I have learned, I have learned the hard way—the beautiful freeing truth that Jesus is the only one who can satisfy me. He’s actually the only one who is meant to!
– Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself
Photo: Brewery Gulch Inn
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