Conversations that Matter
I ran into a dear friend this morning. She was dropping off her daughter for a special program at our school, I was dropping off my own kids for their regular school day. We rarely see each other midweek like that. But, as we walked away from our brief interaction, I reflected on how much I love being her friend.
The thing I love about Pam is that time with her makes me a better woman. There are several things that make our friendship enjoyable: it’s comfortable and time-tested. We’ve served in ministry together, we’ve walked through heartbreaking situations together, we’ve laughed (it’s hard NOT to laugh with Pam), we’ve encouraged each other in childrearing, we’ve disagreed and learned to love well even in those moments, and oh, how we’ve talked (we both love words). Now, as our husbands pastor in different churches and our kids are older, we see each other less often; but our history makes it easy to delve right back in.
The thing I love most is that we always talk about things that matter. We sharpen each other as we talk about the day-to-day. There’s accountability and challenge as we both pursue excellence in our inner lives. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we laugh and talk about ridiculous stuff too. But, somehow, it always comes back around to the stuff that really matters. I always leave with courage to keep on. To live with purpose, humility, and grace. To remember that it really all comes back to loving: God and people. Ultimately, Pam points me to Jesus. I love that about our friendship.
Our conversation wasn’t even that long. Ten minutes, maybe. But, those 10 minutes gave me the courage to continue in my desire to stop the Christmas madness and focus my energies back on Jesus.
I hope you have people like that in your life. God created us with relationship in mind. He never intended for us to gut it out alone. If you don’t have a Pam, ask God to lead you to one. Look for opportunities to grow your existing relationships or take a risk to try a Bible study or a book club or something. Something that would move you from conversations about how cold it’s gotten this week to conversations about the stuff that really matters. To the stuff that will last into eternity…
December 24, 2009 at 7:28 am
what a wonderful blog about the things that matter conversations
I now realize that I hardly ever have fun goofy conversations with my daughter, they are always focused, narrow, about things that matter.
Rarely am I able to answer her messages after reading, they take time
one message about Love took a week to answer. I enjoy your blogs they always make me feel better.