Let’s Talk Relationships

 My husband and I were watching a movie, on Saturday, about a woman who had gone to prison for twenty years. When she got out of prison she didn’t really have anyone in her life except her parole officer. At one point she broke down, cussing and yelling, at some people. She was screaming, “you can’t just act like I don’t exist, I do exist.” This scene made me think about how detrimental isolation is to us. This topic intrigued me, and I love to do research, so I decided to do some research on this. We all know, from Covid distancing protocols, that isolation can cause many issues. An article by Tulane University (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation ) states that “social isolation has been linked to heightened risks of depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline.” Another article on apa.org (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation ) cites a meta-analysis which says that, “lack of social connection heightens health risks as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or having alcohol use disorder. She also found the loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity.” (This meta-analysis was co-authored by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience Brigham Young University.  I tried to access the whole article to give a link to it, but the full article is paid access only.)

Even the Bible tells us that relationships are important. Hebrews 10:25 says, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching.” The reason for going to church is so that we have relationships. It’s so that we have other people who can exhort, or encourage, us. We need people to encourage us, and to pray for us. In Genesis God says, “it is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18) God gave Adam a helper, Eve, because it wasn’t good that Adam be alone. Some of my favorite vereses about relationships are found in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. They says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” These scriptures say so much. We need others to help us in our labors, to hold us accountable and encourage us when we mess up, and to help us in life in general. When we are paired with other people we are not as easily taken down. When we agree in prayer with other people, our prayers are more powerful. And when we come together with others to serve and worship God, the Bible says that He is in our midst. (Matthew 18:20)

Ok, what is the point in all of this? I just wanted to point out, to you as well as to myself, that relationships are extremely important. If you read my last blog post, you saw how I was able to start clawing myself out of a dark depression that had been holding on to me for months, simply by allowing other people into my struggles. I am the world’s worst about isolating myself, especially when times get tough. Although, when times are tough is when I need community even more. I also find it really hard to trust people, I overthink things, and I often worry that people are mad at me. So much trauma in my past has caused me to believe that I’m too much, nobody really wants to be friends with me, and that I’m better off alone. This is all a lie, but Satan uses whatever he can to isolate us, especially from other Christians. He uses our past traumas and our insecurities to whisper lies in our head. It’s our job to recognize them as the lies that they are, and to challenge those lies with God’s truth. 

I don’t have many friends at the moment, mostly because I have pushed people away or I have built walls up so that people couldn’t get past them. It’s a struggle to allow people in, I just don’t want to get hurt again. So many people, who I thought were friends, turned out to not be a friend. I have been abandoned as a friend because I have had a different opinion on a topic, because we couldn’t seem to work together, and because I called them out on something that they didn’t like being called out on. I am working on tearing down those walls though. I want to have the deep, genuine, non-judgemental friendships that will help bring me closer to Christ. I want friends like the paralyzed man in the book of Luke. He couldn’t get to Jesus, for many reasons, so his friends carried his stretcher up on top of a roof, tore the top of the roof off, and lowered him down in front of Jesus. Because this man had friends like these, not only was he healed, but he received the best healing of all, spiritual healing. He was forgiven of all his sins, because his friends were brave and bold enough to take him to Jesus. That’s the kind of friends that I want. I know they are out there, I just have to tear down my concrete walls and build welcoming fences in their place. In the meantime I will hold on to the greatest friend any of us could ever have, Jesus.