It is important for you to prepare yourself for spiritual community.  You have to honestly confront the reality about people and relationships, even among Christians who have every intention of supporting and never hurting each other.  You may be tempted to roll your eyes at this statement, thinking you have been alive for decades and know thoroughly how people and relationships work.  However, I want to challenge that dangerous assumption, because if that were true, you would have a lot of healthy relationships in your life.

One very important truth that you must understand when attempting to create new relationships is that everyone else is broken like you.  They will never get everything right.  They may fail you and repeat something you said to someone else.  They may misunderstand you, something you said or did. They may believe an accusation from the Enemy in their mind, or listen to something someone else said about you that makes them look at you in a different way. They will inevitably fail you at some time in some way.

I can hear you now saying, “Well, I know that!”  But knowing it in your head and actually acting according to that knowledge are two completely different things.  If you really knew that in practice, you would never be surprised (and wouldn’t necessarily disconnect from them permanently) when they repeated something you said, or didn’t keep a promise, or said something negative about your or someone else.   If we are honest with ourselves, most of the time, we expect our friends to be model friends, exemplary friends, who never fail us.  That is our first and biggest mistake, because these unrealistic expectations about other people cause us to overreact to their mistakes, and sometimes even dump the entire relationship.

It takes practice to keep in the forefront of our minds that everyone we know is broken and will fail us at some time.  If we don’t expect perfection from them, we won’t ever experience an overwhelming sense of disappointment when it does happen (and it will happen).   So you need to have realistic expectations of other people when you enter into relationships, and let them surprise you with what a great friend they turn out to be.  I’m not saying you need to hook yourself up with people who you know are habitual liars, manipulators or blatant gossips.  Just expect regular people to mess up.

An important reason to remember that is because you are “regular people”, and you will make every mistake in the book as well. You like to think that you are the perfect friend and would never betray someone’s confidence, or listen to someone else gossip about someone else, but I promise you, you are deceiving yourself if you think you have never failed a friend, albeit unintentionally.

Repeatedly, I see co-dependent women try to help one another, fix one another, and then both of them get upset with the other.  The fixer gets upset because the object of their attention is not getting any better, and still wants more and more from the fixer. The fixee is not grateful enough for what the fixer has done for them.

The fixee gets upset because the fixer is getting too involved in their life (even though they keep asking the fixer to do things).  Each looks at the other as if there is something wrong with them, saying to themselves, “I wouldn’t do it that way”.  No, of course you wouldn’t do it that way – you do it in a different yet equally dysfunctional way.  Everyone can see the other person’s fault and issues, but not their own.

No one ever gets it all right, and you need to enter into friendships not only fully aware of the risks you are taking with them, but also aware of the risk other people are taking by sharing with you.  If you always keep in the forefront of your mind your fallibleness, it will help you guard your heart, mind and mouth in such a way that you will prove, most of the time, to be an excellent and trustworthy friend.

Also, not everyone really understands how to enter into healthy relationships.  Some people are broken in such a way that they are desperate to be heard, accepted, loved and understood. This causes them put too much trust into people they have just met and share way too much, not giving that person time to prove their trustworthiness beforehand.  It is not healthy to blurt out your life story, along with all of your most intimate details, on your first meeting with someone.  It is a sign of extreme neediness, and you need to protect yourself if you are prone to that.

So prepare your heart and your mind for being a part of a spiritual community. Lower your expectations of others, and remember your own fallibility.  Allow others to make mistakes without judging them or cutting them out of your life, treating them as you would want them to treat you when you make relational mistakes. Spiritual community has the ability to hasten your healing, so do whatever you need to do to be a part of it.

RESET ASSIGNMENT:

1. How many “true” friends do you have now, with whom you can discuss intimate details of your life?  Do you want more friends like that?
2. Have you ever been a part of a circle of friends who encouraged and supported one another?  What did you like most about it?
3. What are some of your own character defects that might hinder the development of new friendships?