I want you to take a moment and think about your typical day. From start to finish. From the moment you get out of bed, to the moment you get back into bed. Most everyone will wake up in the morning and instantly be surrounded by their family members. Then they will go to school where they are surrounded by their teachers and classmates. After school, they might have sports practice with their coaches and teammates or other extracurricular activities that involve working with people. They come home to be once again surrounded by their family. And then they go to bed. How many of you can relate to this routine? If you really take the time to reflect, there are very few parts of your day when you are not interacting with other human beings. Have you ever thought about that?

Therefore, it should not be a shock when I tell you that God created us to be in relationships with other people. The minute you enter this world you are surrounded by others. The first thing you ever encounter outside of the womb is another human being. How amazing is that?

God never wanted us to be alone. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at Genesis. When Adam was created and placed in the Garden of Eden, “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), and then God formed Eve out of Adam’s rib. That’s straight from Scripture. That is the Word of God.

In fact, we can even find evidence for this idea before Genesis. Before the world was even created. Before anything else existed, God did. And how did He exist? As a trinity. Father. Son. Holy Spirit. Three persons in one. God himself was, is, and will always be a living relationship. That is His nature. So, in Genesis when it says “God created mankind in his own image” (Genesis 1:27), that is evidence that our existence is centered around relationships as well, just like our Creator.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, just like with any gifts God has given us, He wants us to protect them and make use of them in appropriate ways. Looking back at Genesis, God gave Adam and Eve stewardship over everything He created; the plants, the trees, and all the wild animals. He entrusted all of these amazing creations to them. He commanded them to take care of these gifts and manage them in ways that were good and that would ultimately bring the Creator, God Himself, glory.

He wants us to do the same with the relationships he has placed in our lives. He wants us to live them out in ways that are good for us and for others and also in ways that bring Him glory. Now, if you think back to all the people you interact with throughout your day you will realize that relationships come in all different forms. You have your relationships with those older than you: your parents, your teachers, and your coaches. You also have relationships with those your age: your siblings, your classmates, your teammates, and your friends. And there are healthy and unhealthy ways to live out each of these specific relationships. That’s a lot to unpack right there. So, instead of trying to talk about ALL these different relationships, I am just going to focus on ONE. The relationship that I believe has the most impact on you in your current stage of life (as middle school girls). And that relationship is with your peers, specifically the girls your age around you.

Just think about this for a second. On any given weekday you spend around 7 hours at school. 7 HOURS. And that is not even including sports or extracurricular activities. That’s a lot of time. Somedays you spend more time with your peers at school than with your own family. And even when you come home you still have the tools to communicate with your friends on social media and through texting. Arguably, you will spend most of your time and energy on your female friendships, and I think that right there is an important reason to make sure that we are living out these relationships in the way that God intended.

In order to fully understand the way God wanted us to live out these female friendships, I think it is best for me to first point out ways we tend to sabotage them. I am going to talk about four things that tend to either hurt the friendships we already have or prevent us from forming new ones. I call these “friendship-killers”.

Friendship Killer #1 – Comparison

The first friendship-killer I want to talk about is COMPARISON. Comparison is the beginning of a lot of problems we encounter throughout life and is a trap that many fall into quite easily, especially with the rise of social media. How many of you use some form of social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)? I am going to use Facebook for this example, but it applies to all social media platforms out there. Whenever I am scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed (which is pretty much on a daily basis) it’s hard for me to look at what people are posting and not begin comparing my life to theirs. Have any of you ran into this problem? People post pictures of themselves hanging out with their friends, doing fun activities with their family, or sometimes just upload a bunch of random selfies. While it is not bad for people to post these things, our natural reaction is to compare what they have to what we lack, whether that be certain relationships, physical features, or life experiences.

Social media is just one outlet for us to play this comparison game, but we can compare ourselves to our peers with or without it. In fact, we probably do it everyday without even realizing it.  It’s just a natural tendency we have as human beings. And what does it accomplish? Well, absolutely nothing. It just creates in us feelings of ingratitude for what God has given us with and feelings of jealousy towards others who have what we want. After a while, these feelings of ingratitude and jealousy will begin to weigh on us and affect the way we treat ourselves as well as how we interact with our friends. Imagine this playing out within a friendship. When good things start happening in our friends lives, we might begin to respond negatively out of anger and frustration. Instead of responding in a loving, supportive way we might begin to downplay their successes by making fun of them or treating them like they are not important. However, in reality we wish these things could be happening in our own lives. Is this sounding familiar to anyone?

Friendship Killer #2 – Gossip

The second friendship killer is gossip. This one seems pretty obvious, but you know what’s funny? It’s one of the most common things girls do in middle school! Its also the number one cause of drama between friends. One of the things that human beings are most drawn to are stories and we tend not to care whether they are true or false. When someone starts spreading around scandalous information about someone, we usually just send it on its way to the next open ear, without fact checking or thinking about whether or not what is being say could hurt someone’s reputation or well-being.

It’s pretty easy to see how something like gossip could destroy our friendships, especially if the people we are gossiping about are our friends. If you are spreading false stories about your friend to the people around you, eventually it will come back around to your friend. Imagine how that would feel for a second. Someone that you trust, someone that you confided closely, was spreading lies about you. Lies that cause people to think of you in a negative way. Personally, I would feel devastated. It would be hard for me to be vulnerable and trust that friend again. Once that trust is broken, it is hard to get that friendship back to where it once was. This is the type of stuff that is happening quite frequently among middle school girls and it is destroying friendships and the sense of community in its path.

Friendship Killer #3 – Unforgiveness

The third friendship killer is unforgiveness. Still not completely sure if unforgiveness is a word or not, but you all know what I am trying to get at 🙂  There is this famous saying “unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”. There is so much truth in this statement. Not forgiving others can really take a toll on a person. Being hurt by someone is one thing, but holding onto that hurt and not forgiving the person who offended you? All that does is create bitterness and resentment. The only thing you are accomplishing is poisoning your own heart and soul.

So unforgiveness is definitely not good for us on a personal level, but how exactly does it affect our friendships? Well, that part is actually more obvious. The whole point of not forgiving someone is to get back at them in the only way we know how. By taking control of the situation and trying to take away their peace of mind and heart. In the process of doing so, we are pushing that friend farther away  and putting up a barrier of negative feelings between us. Does any of that sound friendly to you? The longer you hold back forgiveness, the farther the distance and the stronger the negative emotions you will experience.

Friendship Killer #4 – Fear

The last friendship-killer is FEAR. You are probably thinking, “fear of what?”. You can be afraid of a lot of things. But the fear I am talking about, the kind that impacts how we relate to the other girls around us, is the fear of rejection. When we do our best to let down our guard and be our true self around our friends, fear is that little voice that says “They won’t like you anymore once they know the real you”.  For the people who pretend like they have it all together, fear is that little voice that says “Eventually they are going to figure out who you really are, and they won’t like you anymore”. First of all, can you listen to how awful fear sounds? Fear is obviously not from God. Imagine God saying those things to you. It doesn’t seem right, does it? Because those things are not from our Lord.

Now imagine how having these thoughts could affect our interactions with our friends or potential friends. If we are afraid of being rejected, we are not going to be completely vulnerable around our friends. We are only going to show them the parts of ourselves that we think are not at risk of rejection. Which means that our friendships are not going to be very deep and will begin to seem artificial. They are going to be surface-level friendships with no depth. BORING. This fear can also keep us away from forming new friendships. Fear keeps telling us the risk of opening ourselves up to others is not worth it. Fear tells us to keep our true selves hidden away, but that is not what God wanted our friendships to look like.

Take a moment and look back at all these “friendship killers”. Do you see something that they all share? Do you see the theme that I see? They all ISOLATE. Going back to the beginning of this post, I said that God never wanted us to be alone. But the habits and behaviors we are continuing to repeat over and over again are causing the exact opposite of what God intended. They are causing people to draw away from one another instead of towards each other.  The minute you notice a certain habit of yours causing you to isolate yourself or push people away, that’s a good sign that is not the will of God.

So, now that we know the bad habits that affect the way we interact with our female friends, how can we counteract these? What does God really want our relationships with other girls to look like? I think the following “sisterhood builders” can give us a pretty clear idea…

Sisterhood Builder #1 – Recognize & Bring Out Each Other’s Gifts

Instead of comparing ourselves to one another and being jealous about what we don’t have, we should be pointing out the talents and goodness we see in other people and encouraging them to use those gifts. Imagine how different our relationships would be if we did! We waste so much time taking notice of each other differences and reacting negatively to them. So why not switch that around and notice diversity in a healthy way? Recognize that everyone you encounter in your life will be different from you in some aspect, and hey, that’s OK! In fact, that’s a beautiful thing. The world would be so boring if everyone were the same. St. Therese even said “If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose it’s loveliness”. If we are all walking around trying to be someone else then who is going to be us? The world needs us. Our gifts. Our perspective. Our personality. Listen to the wise words of Mother Teresa, “I can do things that you cannot do. You can do things that I cannot do. Together we can do great things.”

Sisterhood Builder #2 – Encourage & Pray for One Another

What we say matters. With just one sentence we can build someone up or tear them down. The old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”, that’s a bunch of L.I.E.S. my friends. Words are way more powerful than most of us realize. I mean, God literally spoke the world into existence. He said “let there be light” and there was light. Words seem pretty darn powerful to me! So, how can we use our words to build up our friendships instead of break them apart? Well, we can start by not spreading lies about each other. God is a God of Truth and we are made in His image and likeness. When we are walking around spreading falsehoods we are going against the way we were created. Instead of lies why not spread truth? Speak highly of one another. Encourage one another. Build each other up. And when we are not busy building up the people around us, why not use our words to pray for each other? Why not talk to God about the other people in our life? Why not tell Jesus how concerned we are about the things happening to the people we encounter daily? More goodness can come from encouragement and prayer than could ever come from spreading false or hurtful information about one another. So, let’s use our words wisely for with great power comes great responsibility (yes, I just quoted Spiderman 🙂 )

Sisterhood Builder #3 – Forgive One Another

Throughout scripture, God commands his people to forgive each other. Colossians 3:13 says, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you”. Why does He tell us to do so? Well, I think it’s more for our sake than the sake of others. It’s hard to build strong relationships when we are weighed down by past hurts or mistakes. It’s hard to move forward and create new friendships when we are stuck in the past. It’s pretty simple, if we don’t forgive we don’t grow. We become stuck in negative feelings of bitterness and resentfulness. Feelings that are hard to shake off until we accept what has happened, forgive the people who hurt us, and move forward. Doesn’t that sound like an awful place to be anyways? Who would want to stay there? Jesus also says that we should forgive each other “seventy times seven times”(Matthew 18:12). Why so many times? Doesn’t that seem a little much? Well, I’m personally glad he said a high number. We are human beings after all. Mistakes are kind of our thing. We mess up on daily basis. If we were never forgiven or if we never forgave others that would be a lot of weight to carry on our hearts, minds, and souls. No thanks! I’ll stick with forgiveness and for peace in our hearts and in our relationships that’s what God wants us to stick with too.

Sisterhood Builder #4 – Be Fearless

This one is a hard one, but it is so important when it comes to building up our friendships. We have to have the courage to open ourselves up to other people. We have to learn how to be vulnerable. One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes sheds light on this idea of vulnerability: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable” (The Four Loves). Now, I am not saying go share every personal detail about yourself to the next stranger you meet. DO NOT DO THAT. That is dangerous! But what I am trying to say is we are going to have to come outside our comfort zones a little bit when we are first meeting and establishing relationships with other people. You can’t build a relationship with someone without “relating” to them first. And how do we relate? By sharing our likes, dislikes, and experiences. By creating fun memories with one another. And if you are one of those naturally outgoing people, then you have a wonderful gift. Use it to help those who are a little more shy and quiet who may have a harder time initiating conversations. Don’t just be friends with the extroverts. We need the introverts in our life too!

To all my fellow girls out there, I hope this blog post encourages you and strengthens you on your own journey. Sisterhood has had such a huge impact on my life and I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without the female friends who have supported me along the way. Please comment below and share this blog post with anyone you think could benefit from it. Also, feel free to to share how sisterhood has impacted your life or any advice you have on how to build stronger female friendship with the ladies in our lives. I would love to hear your perspective and stories.

Blessing from Beyond the Wardrobe,

Nicole