Unworthy

I'll never forget the night that first solidified my place in one of my core friend groups. We were sitting in the living room of one of their houses after a choir rehearsal; it was the first choir season that I'd decided to hang around after rehearsals without an explicit invitation to any conversation that was going on. My first couple of seasons I'd often snuck out the door, never feeling socially part of things and afraid to impose - but that summer I knew that I needed people, and I felt more at home with these people than any other group. So I stuck around, worried that I was selfishly imposing, feeling like the glasses of wine offered were out of obligation, hoping that the people I was with weren't annoyed by my presence. Then suddenly I got pulled into a conversation about plans to spend a day at the nearby amusement park celebrating one of their birthdays, and I was asked if I was free on that date. I answered that I was and made a note on my calendar, but I spent the following weeks unsure whether I was actually invited or if I'd been included in the conversation out of obligation because I'd overstayed my welcome and that they hoped I'd forget by the time that day actually rolled around. It took being added to a group text a few days before the outing for me to feel confident that I was actually meant to be part of the plans.

Friendship has never come easily to me - though I didn't always realize it. When in second grade I started getting pulled for a weekly "Friendship Club" with the school counselor and a handful of girls in my class, I saw it as no different than getting pulled for Gifted Education opportunities. Sure, the other girls and I were all a little shy, but I also saw us as really nice girls and figured that's why we were given the privilege of fun games and activities (and Jolly Ranchers!) with the school counselor every week. It took my first post-college therapist asking if I'd ever been part of such a thing for me to recognize what that "Friendship Club" actually was - a social-emotional skills intervention group. Former teacher me looks back now and sees the obvious social-emotional learning basis in all those fun games and activities, but back then?

That 20/20 hindsight is a real kicker. Realizing that how you saw yourself doesn't match how the world - or at least how your peers - saw you? It's a hard pill to swallow. In every personality quiz ever, I identified myself as the friend that others would come to for a listening ear or advice - only to realize in adulthood that I was never, and had never been, the person that friends came to when life got hard. I saw myself as mostly normal - outside of being a smart kid and a church kid - only to look back and realize how often I was shunned by the normal kids and left to hang out with the "weird" ones. Where a decade of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in my young adult years would tell me that the way I react to people - and especially potential friends - is based in thought distortions, I feel these days that my instinctive reactions are far more based in subconscious pattern recognition.

My childhood was littered with failed friendships and potential friendships. There's the first grade friend who I approached to play with at recess early in second grade only for her to tell me she wanted to play with her new classmates instead, after which point we never played together again. There was the time I asked one friend to give me lessons on how to fit into her larger friend group; I never quite executed, though, and was never welcome to play with the rest of them at recess. There were the only neighbor girls my age who one day finally invited me to join them after I'd spent years silently longing to be included - only for them to spend that day literally running me through a series of tests to determine if I could join in their group (and rewarding me with tiny candies when I did well), after which I was never invited over again - I assume I failed their tests in the end. And there was the fourth grade friend whose larger friend group decided on a day-to-day basis whether or not I was allowed to hang out with them. Then there were the times where I was tolerated due to proximity but never really welcome. The two girls my age at church that I told our Children's Ministry Director of that we were the Three Musketeers - only to realize later in life that the two of them were best friends who just tolerated me at church. The times that girls I was individually friends with invited me to their birthday parties only for me to spend most of my time there awkwardly on the outskirts of the activities and social interactions. Or just the seemingly-infinite number of times that we were supposed to pick a partner or group to do something with at school or at church where I was always part of the random collection of leftovers who got thrown together because no one else wanted us.

While I eventually found a solid core group of friends who carried me through my junior high and high school years (thank you, honors classes!), I floundered any time I was apart from them. The only choir kid in my core friend group, I spent much of my time there as a loner. Any church activities apart from my friend group I often found myself the tolerated tagalong (though the adults generally liked having me around). When I got to college, I found what I thought were friend groups only to realize that most times I was friends with one person (or occasionally two people), and everyone else just tolerated me - which means that if the friend was making plans, I got invited, but if anyone else in the group was making the plans, I got left out. Further into adulthood when I joined activities in an attempt to find friends, and I'd find people who I'd enjoy spending time with at the activity, I soon realized that they were often spending time together elsewhere where I was just welcome when we were partaking in the activity together. (Given, it's possible I missed some subtle invitations along the way seeing as I found out that the friend group that invited me on their amusement park day had apparently spent years trying to figure out how to get me to spend more time with them, and I was fully oblivious to that fact. As another more recent friend likes to say - I'm like a vampire; I need a clear invitation to know that I'm welcome.)

Somewhere along the line, my subconscious collected all these experiences together, began recognizing patterns, and developed coping mechanisms based on the conclusions that came to light. I began to operate based on the assumption that while I remembered most people, I was never memorable to them. Feeling less like a welcome friend and more like a tolerated nuisance, I stopped interacting without clear invitation to do so. And after years of struggling to discern the line between friendship and acquaintance and getting burned by wrongly assuming friend, I began to hold back and let others make the first move. You know that Hollywood trope where a tween/teen writes a note to their crush asking "Do you want to be my boyfriend/girlfriend? Check 'Yes' or 'No'"? I've spent countless times in my adult life wishing I could do the same for friendship. Instead I wait for others to start the conversation. I wait for others to extend an invitation before I dare reach out myself. I let others send the friend/follow requests on social media, though I'll generally gladly accept immediately after watching them be recommended to me for months.

It's no wonder I spent a decade in therapy with an official diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder. The message in therapy was clear - my brain was deceiving me; I needed to work on having the courage to be vulnerable and dare to reach out. When I finished my second intensive group therapy program, the traditional inspiration rock that the therapists gifted me had the word "Brave" on it as a reminder to be brave enough to be myself because myself was a pretty great person that the world would generally like. It took another four years to fully come into my own, but I did get there. I felt confident in my career. Confident in myself. Confident in that strengthening friend group from choir. Then after years of the world generally saying "Be yourself!" I suddenly got a new message - "No, not like that! Try again," (in the most disgusted tone possible).

As my career fell apart, I lost my educator friends first. And then global crisis struck, and I lost most of the rest. I held on to a handful, but it felt a far cry from where I'd been mere months prior. And I gave up. I liked the me that I had developed into, and I think I was on the verge of living into the full depths of the person who God had created me to be. But outside of a handful of people, no one wanted that version of me. And after years of work, my energy at forming myself into the right kind of person was spent - so I gave up. Gave up on work. Gave up on relationship. Gave up on my place with God. I was done.

I spent the years that followed raging at the world. But I also spent a lot of time internally spiraling. Popular psychology suggests that if you keep running into the same disagreeable social situations, you should probably stop looking at what was wrong with everyone else and turn inward instead. And no matter which set of standards for friendship I looked at, I continually came up horribly short.

By my generation's standards, I'm a walking red flag. Where the generations that came before us struggled to set and/or respect boundaries, my generation has swung in the opposite direction with boundaries set hard and unyielding with the aim of safeguarding self and self-chosen protected groups at all costs. While the motivations behind the boundaries are understandable, it's made friendship feel like an impossible transactional balancing game. Any friend who cannot perfectly match your contributions of time, energy, emotion, service, and finance is deemed toxic and in need of immediate desertion. So as someone who's flowed in and out of burnout for most of my adult life, unable to survive in isolation but also often unable to give back as much as I need to take - where does that leave my value as a friend? And it's one thing when it's a bunch of social media trends, but when you start to hear your friends express - either directly or passive-aggressively - that they feel like their efforts in friendship in aren't being matched even as I put forth as much energy as I can muster in those times? Despite other friends assuring me that I'm not a burden, I've ceased to be able to believe their encouragements.

Then there's finding the balance of who you're supposed to lean on and how hard you're allowed to lean on them when life gets rough. Most of my friends at this point are married, and their spouses have become their top priority of people they support and lean on - as it should be. But where does that leave me as someone who's single and left as no one's top priority? There are those who lean on their biological families, but as someone who's an only child, who's not particularly close to my extended family, and who sometimes needs not a parent to talk to, I find myself leaning on chosen family - but how hard can I lean when so many of those people are close enough with their biological families to rightly prioritize them? Some lean on their church communities, but not quite a year at mine (and even less time since I started connecting with people), I'm still trying to find my place amongst pre-established groups, to figure out where I can step in and where I'm intruding. I generally feel welcome to join in in particular activities and conversations, but I don't know where I can reach out. And even as deeper connections begin to form, I find myself terrified that once they get to know the greater depths of me, they'll retreat in fear and/or disgust as so many before have done. In the midst of all of that, there's knowing that people have multiple circles of friends - levels of friendship of varying closeness - and that's to be expected; even Jesus called only twelve to be his disciples and picked just a few of those to be his closest confidantes. But what if the people who I place in my innermost circles - those who one does life with and those who are "soul friends" - wouldn't place me in theirs? Where does that leave me, and how is it fair of me to ask them to exist in my life at that level of closeness when they already have others who fill those kinds of roles?

Even looking to Biblical truth leaves me with questions at best and with feelings of inadequacy at worst. In an ultimate question, where God calls us both to cast our burdens on him (1 Peter 5:7) and to bear each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2) - where does the balance lie? Where do I lean on humans more than a human should bear or lean on them so hard that I don't let God in as much as I should? And where do I retreat into God so far that I isolate myself from people in dangerous ways? Where there are those that say that Jesus is all we need, how does that balance out with the Biblical clarity that God made us to live in community? And even if I answer those questions, I look at the ways the Bible describes friendship - of service, of putting others before self, of being a positive influence. I regularly fail to fulfill all of those traits.

It turns out that I'm just self-aware enough to be cognizant of many of my flaws as a friend. I'm often flaky and forgetful. I haven't managed to arrive most anywhere on time since I got the worst of my anxiety under control a handful of years ago. I spew far more emotions than what I probably should and share the non-pleasant pieces of my personal history far too easily. I regularly spend my time leading up to a social outing reviewing topics of conversation worth pursuing only to forget them as soon as an opportunity for conversation presents itself, leading to one-sided conversations and awkward silences. And my bandwidth for being helpful in concrete ways has a far-too-narrow band of conditions to it where any deviance from those conditions results in me having a full meltdown that not only inhibits my ability to provide aid but creates even more work for whoever I was trying to serve. Other times the natural defender in me emerges and I overprotect to a point of overstepping - or to a point of encouraging them to indulge in snark and judgement while I join in the same. I am loyal to a fault but in a way that is far too clingy to a point that I have to continually self-monitor to prevent straight-up jealousy and possessiveness (a preventative effort at which I often fail, at least internally). I am far too demanding of others' limited supply of time. Far too emotionally dependent, especially on those whose presence is regulating, often parasitically so. Far too willing to trauma dump uninvited while retreating from open invitations to true vulnerability.

I am at all times, it feels, every worst version of too much and not enough. I am too much take and not enough give. Too much stubborn and not enough humility. Too much emotion and not enough rational. Too much of all that makes me deserving of flashing red warning lights as a friend and not enough of what it takes to be a desirable companion through any season of life. My faults as a friend far outweigh my strengths. My sins outweigh any love I have to offer. At my core, I am wholly unworthy of friendship.

It was one thing when my social circles were wider, when I could spread my crazy around a bit more easily, at least enough to be a tolerable participant in social interactions and gatherings. But these days? My circle of confidantes has shrunk so substantially, and we all seem to continually hit major stress points all at the same time. Who am I to lean on them when they're already stressed to the max? Who am I to pour out all of my irrational crazy at their feet when they have much more concrete, real struggles in their own lives - when they're weighed down by tasks and conflicts while I sit in the discomfort of insecurity in friendship and the loneliness of even an ounce less of time together than I'd prefer? So increasingly I retreat. And spiral. And retreat further. They are worthy of whole-hearted support that I don't know how to provide. I am worthy only of my self-imposed isolation.

There are times when I can hold it all in - the spiral of insecurity and resultant self-loathing. Times that I can shove it down far enough to be at least an ounce of the friend that those in my innermost circles of trust deserve. But it always eventually bursts out again, often before I can even stop myself. On the best days, I manage to hold it in well enough that I'm able to ignore that it's there (though the highly-observant eye can catch it). On the good days it comes out on drives home from work or church. On the bad days it bursts out in unstoppable tears as I become the girl who can't stop crying at work for the umpteenth time. On the worst days it pours forth as verbal vomit, adding to the loads of my already-overburdened friends before I know how to stop myself - and then I spiral all the more.

There came a time last fall when my own burdens had lifted enough while some of my friends' burdens grew heavier that I prayed in earnest about how to be a better friend to them. At the core of the situation, I saw their pain and struggle and wanted to alleviate what I could. The answer God provided me was an unexpected one - "Just continue to be there." It wasn't the answer I'd wanted, but the scripture He brought forward gave reasons good enough that I could accept it. I wasn't meant to help protect my friends from those trials; I was meant to walk with them through it. There existed some level of relief to that - at the time I took it to mean that I was being too hard on myself, that who I was in that moment was enough. But as weeks and months passed, I continued to find ways in which I fell short, and my spirals continued to grow. In a week where our women's Bible Study at church was looking at the spiritual practice of being in community with other believers, I silently wept as I considered who those innermost circles of friends might be for me while fearing both that I could not offer them what they offered me and that their innermost circles were too full for me to claim them for mine - and with the burdens I knew they were already bearing for others, it felt unfair to even dare asking to add my own to their loads. A couple of months later I spent a full work day spiraling, unable to hold back tears after a series of days where I felt like I was repeatedly nothing more than an emotional parasite, asking others to help carry my load while too often being oblivious to their need until it was too late - they deserved so much better than I. And as life circumstances led to continual periods where I was naturally isolated from my most valued friends, particularly in times when they were able to spend time together apart from me, I spiraled in loneliness and shame over the jealousy that resulted.

There were times I retreated physically, trying to force myself to return as soon as emotions were at least outwardly hidden. But each time I retreated a bit more emotionally. Closing myself in felt like the only way to protect my friends from the kind of damage my unchecked emotions seemed to wreak. It was the only way I knew how to deny myself in order to support them - but it meant that even when the invitation for openness was there, I continued to hide behind walls - I just didn't realize how badly until one of my friends called me on my avoidance of depth in conversation on an evening of life processing. The funny part of it was, that evening was the third time that week that a friend whose companionship I felt unworthy of had each, in their own way, expressed their gratitude for my friendship. A week when the most closed-off friend admitted that I get one of the least filtered versions of her. A week when the friend who I fear won't be able to handle the darker sides of me thanked me for loving her exactly as she is in all her optimism and outward striving to continually be more Christlike. A week when a friend who I assumed got all the wisdom she needed from her family expressed appreciation for my perspective. A week when I'd learned that two of them had had a conversation about my value as a listening ear. And it was just days later that another friend affirmed that I'm supposed to be a part of a notable calling that God has set before him.

And the thing is? These types of moments and conversations have happened all along. As I paged back through old journals to confirm timeline of events writing this post, I ran across far more entries than I remembered expressing gratitude on days where my most valued people shared their appreciation for my friendship. So I try to rest in the gratitude of those assurances rather than drown in the shame of needing them to calm my insecurities in the first place. Because the fact of the matter is a knowledge that behind those assurance is a God who is merciful, God who sees me doubt my worth and responds by giving my friends the opportunity to present evidence to the contrary, and they have stepped into that calling.

Friendship is a weird thing when you think about it. There are no bonds of blood. Nor of romance. Nor of contract. You wander through life, find someone whose companionship you enjoy, and claim them for some or all of life's journey. There is no obligation to stay, just a desire to do life together. Other relationships may be bound more officially, but the Bible mentions the value of a good friend enough times that friendship must still hold some level of importance, even in God's eyes. And without bonds of blood or marriage or contract, friendship is a tie far more simply - maybe even easily - broken. To stay is a choice made each step of the way. Now why my friends continue to choose me is a deep mystery to my mind. It baffles me that they continually look at the falling-apart, overly emotive, socially bumbling, obliviously self-centered, failure-to-be-a-servant person that I am and declare "I pick that one!" And that they continue to do so the more of my crazy that gets revealed, the more that I snark and equalize just to see how far they'll let me push? It is a grace.

The truth is, the conclusion I drew last fall when God's call was for me to just be there for my friends in the ways that I already have been - the idea that I was enough - that was false. Because the fact of the matter is that on my own I will never be enough. I am human, and I sin daily, often most hurting those who I'd least want to wound. God's insistence that it was not my job to protect wasn't just about my desire to protect from outside struggles but about my tendency to want to protect them from myself - because to protect from myself leads to isolation that creates further chaos and damage.

"It is not good for man to be alone" ~ Genesis 2:18a

In practice and in context, it's a verse generally used to describe marriage. Then as I conversed recently with a friend about my struggles of late with singleness, she brought it up as a reminder that even if God doesn't have marriage in His plans for my future, He would still find a way to surround me with friends; I am not meant to be alone. I am unworthy of friendship, but that doesn't mean that I am meant to be isolated - instead it offers those that have accepted God's call to be my friend to be His vessels of grace in my life. And when I allow myself the vulnerability to humbly accept that grace, He is able to use me in the same way toward others.

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:8-10

God has a tendency to call the least worthy to do His work. Jacob, Isaac's second born, stole his brother's birthright, and yet God brought the line of His people through Jacob anyway. Moses was raised as an Egyptian, was a murderer who tried to cover up his crimes, and yet God still called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Rahab was a prostitute, and yet she is listed in the genealogy of Jesus. Jesus called not the religious leaders but the common - even the detested, such as Matthew, the tax collector - to be His disciples. Saul, a great persecutor of Christians, became Paul, the writer of much of the New Testament who carried the gospel to the non-Jewish world. Time after time, the Bible tells stories of God calling the unlikely and unworthy to carry out his work - and he continues to do so in the present age. Nearly all the best spiritual leaders I know in my own life, official or otherwise, have at some point - especially early on in their calling - questioned whether they were fit for the role. And I've had multiple conversations with friends recently who questioned who they were to carry out a task that God had called them to take on where I was able to remind each of them that their knowledge that they were unequipped and unworthy was precisely why God had chosen them for the task.

Last fall when I asked God for the wisdom of how to be a friend, I wanted to ease my friends' burdens, but my pride also wanted the boost of feeling like I could be a support. As I slowly but surely begin to admit that I can't do it on my own, God more and more often steps in. A day that I was running on fumes but a friend was struggling, God gave me the ability to act as a regulating presence. In days where my overprotective nature could have joined in angry rampages as it has in the past, God has bestowed me with a peaceful groundedness to bring calm to the storm. On days where optimism won't cut it, God has offered me the opportunities to just be there in precisely the moment where it is needed. Each act of friendship one that I couldn't fulfill on my own but where God worked through me to provide my friends with what they needed - and that was always the point.

Because any striving to grow on my own still never would have been enough. My friends are worthy of so much more than me, and by allowing God to work through me, they receive all that they deserve. As a friend recently described her own, younger realization "You mean I don't have to do it on my own? There's this thing called the Spirit who helps me?" In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he doesn't write of the fruits of one's works or personal strivings but the fruits of the Holy Spirit - God's guiding presence in each believer (the whole of Galatians 5 is probably worth reading here). And when we remember that, it is God who receives the glory. God the creator of friendship. The creator of relationship. He who made us to live in community deserves all the praise. So I may be unworthy of friendship - but God who is gracious and merciful has given me the gift of friendship anyway because he created us to be in relationship with each other as we are with Him.

That's not to say that I don't still have to strive to be better and do better - it's an act of daily surrender. Of laying friendships before God to keep them from becoming idols. Of humbly asking God to work through me to be who my friends need each day. And I can't promise that there won't be more spirals because, well, I'm still human, still learning to let go of my own worries and submit to God's plan, still so susceptible to all of Satan's snares. But each day I learn to trust God a little more. To trust that while I on my own am unworthy, God has deemed me worthy of all his promises - including relationship with others. And more and more, I try to hold to those promises and trust in His plan. And in the moments when I succeed in believing those promises, I begin to find peace.