TOTHEUNTAMEDHEART.

Brene Brown wrote that true belonging is not passive,

and I think that’s a call for the sisterhood of Christ to rise.

For a little over two years, my friends and I have been intentional about showing up to grow together. 

In the early days of meeting to sit in the living room and awkwardly avoid eye contact in between having things to say, I wasn’t sold that you could just start showing up and truly make friends like that. The part of me who had felt left behind, ghosted, and burned one too many times believed that true friendships that are actually deep, steadfast, and the special kind of sacred that feels covered in pixie dust only come from heaven. He plops them down on your lap one day when you meet and feel that *instant spark*. You couldn’t persuade me otherwise.

But we gathered, week after week, showing up to sit in the living room with no notes, Bible, conversation starters– just us and a cup of home-brewed coffee, each of us beginning to gravitate week after week to the same spot in the room, claiming our own mugs in our friend’s cupboard. 

Do you want to know what happened?

Of course you do. 

My view changed. The more we gathered, the deeper we came to know each other and understand each other on a heart level. We showed up for each other and God took our lives and intertwined us into a cord. The more we gathered, the more God watered and grew this beautiful friendship that had no miracle grow, no jack and the beanstalk level instant connection. God built an amazing, deep friendship from the ground up off of one small thing: showing up.

Sure sometimes there are walls that cannot be penetrated and you know what? Walk away with zero offense, sister, because those aren’t your friends. The Lord has milk and honey, promise land kind of friends to you and He doesn’t want you to try to place your piece to the puzzle in a spot where His love will be hindered and won’t reach you through the gift of relationships the way He desires. And once more, let me say it: trash the offense as you walk away. Crinkle it in a ball and slam it like MJ. Your offense and bitterness or even allowing it to let you feel any smaller doesn’t hurt them– it hurts you and the people God has waiting for you with open arms, ready to love you. Don’t bring what is ungodly into what is sacred. They don’t, and will never, mix.

The Lord has dug His hands into the soil, creating a fresh hole for a fertile seed. He’s on His knees, waiting for you to rise up and take your place.

“He will be standing firm like a flourishing tree

planted by God’s design,

deeply rooted by the brooks of bliss,

bearing fruit in every season of life.

He is never dry, never fainting,

ever blessed, ever prosperous.”

Ps 1:3

This beautiful poem is about the one who walks in God’s ways, the shared verse a description of what that person is like and the fruit they will bear. I think when we hear things like “walking in God’s way”, we think of laws. We think of rule following. But following God, we know, when boiled down has far less to do with any set of rules and far more to do with believing. So believing. Yes, bearing fruit– not because we have to check off boxes but because when you love someone it makes you act differently. Love changes everything. So bearing fruit. Community, because even the trinity reflects relationship, not to mention every scripture used to describe the church like “the body” (united), “the bride” (singular, unity), etc. God’s way is a way of community. He cares about us like that and wants us to stop hating people and calling ourselves ‘not a people person’, because He wants us to be about what He is about, friend, and God is about His people. 

The scripture says that the one who walks in God’s ways will never dry and will bear fruit in every season, and when I read this for the first time I was immediately reminded of the vision of my friend and I He had given me. Our friendship was compared to a game of taking turns running with everything we had within us, and with that momentum swinging the other friend to the front, where that one would then run as hard as she could to swing the other. Back and forth it went, and it still does. 

Neither one of us can stand in a drought for long before the other one rips us out by forceful momentum, pulling us forward. This is friendship. It is encouraging, inspiring, challenging, and it keeps our spiritual eyes open and alert. This is walking in God’s way, too. 

God has dug a precious hole for you to plant your roots, friend. He has a place for you, and it is not alone or distanced. It is time to stop being passive, for His bride to stop being wallflowers, though we may be beautiful ones. There is glory here to be revealed, through a healed sisterhood of Christ, showing a broken, barren, divided world of women what womanhood looks like in the Kingdom, as we bring heaven down, loosening deeper unity that displays glory in friendships that protect, cultivate, fertilize, sow, nurture, heal, and fuse. 

Rise and run, sister.