What kind of friend are we called to be?
So, I have to tell you about a girl that had an embarrassing incident happen just this last week. She may or may not be a friend of mine. Name being withheld for what you will soon find out to be obvious reasons.
My friend was having a breakfast meeting with a friendly colleague. She ordered the All-American platter, eggs scrambled. The meal was scrumptious, and she ate everything on her plate. So she thought. After they were done eating they carried on about a project for another 30 mins and then headed to their cars to get to work.
As most of us ladies do she headed straight to the rear-view mirror to check her teeth. That’s when she discovered it, a big slimy chunk of egg sitting to the side of her mouth. For 30 minutes or more, she had sat there talking to her friend with egg on her face. And that whole time, her friend had said absolutely NOTHING to her about it.
Imagine how she felt in that moment. EMBARASSING! I’d have been so humiliated I would have beat my head on the dash of the car. I mean come on! Who does that? Not only had her friend been staring at the egg on her face for a long time, so had everyone else surrounding her! Everyone knew it was there except for her! Imagine how badly all those people wanted to go and scrape it off her, but just sat there instead, staring at it, trying to will it off her face?! Seriously, I can’t even!
What kind of friend stares at you sitting with egg on your face and says absolutely nothing to you about it?
That would be the “us” kind. We are that friend. We are the ones that are likely, right now, staring at a friend with egg on her face. Figuratively speaking of course.
I think it’s safe to say that we all have at least one friend that we know has a big issue they are not aware of yet. Maybe we’ve noticed she is drinking a lot, maybe we’ve noticed she’s gotten far too skinny, maybe we’ve noticed that her office friendship has gotten far too cozy. The examples could go on and on. The truth is, we know that our friend has a big ugly slimy issue going on, and we are too afraid to say anything to her.
Why is it we have this fear? Well, what we may think are very valid reasons for not addressing issues with our friends, are actual big ol’ lies from the big ol’ meanie…Satan. Lies including:
It’s not loving and it’s judgmental to confront someone about their issues.
I just don’t know how to approach it or counsel her about it.
She clearly must already know she has this problem and is just not doing anything about it.
It’s not my problem and she will figure it out eventually.
If I say anything, she might get mad and it may cost us our friendship.
I can tell you honestly that I have experienced all the above. I too have been a sucky friend. And trust me, I get it, these are HUGE things to overcome. These lies can paralyze us from being the friend that we need to be. The friend that helps them recognize the egg on their face.
So how do we deal with Satan being a big fat liar, liar, pants on fire? That part is easy. We discover the Truth. It’s all in the scriptures. The scriptures tell us clearly how we should handle these situations and how we need to overcome each one of these lies. This week, we will be tackling each of these lies one by one to understand how scripture can help us move from being a silent friend to an EGGcelent friend.
“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:12-13 New Living Translation (NLT)
Part 2 we will tackle Lie #1 - It’s not loving and it’s too judgmental to confront someone about their issues.
Full disclosure: This is an imaginary friend created for the sole purposes of painting the picture of this story. I realize many of you immediately assumed that said friend was me, which I will respond by saying I may or may not have had this happen to me in the past because it is entirely in my character, but that also means that you may or may not be that friend that didn’t tell me about it, which means there may or may not be paybacks.