The only way to have a friend is to be one. Be one relentlessly.

Love appropriately (which simply means respecting boundaries, cherishing quirks, managing/eliminating expectations) and unconditionally.

Most of all, think well of your friend.

Your entire experience of that relationship equals the sum total of your thoughts about the person. Seriously, it isn’t even your memories together, it is not what she said or what she did. The quality of your relationship to anyone equals the quality of the thoughts you choose to think about them. Your experience of your friend is the story you have told yourself about her.

Why choose a story that devalues the friendship? Why choose a narrative that makes you feel offended (you did know that you always offend yourself, right…no one can offend you, if you don’t offend you with what you decide to believe) Why let love die, when you can choose a story that keeps love kindled.

A brief but vital aside: I’m talking about when a relationship is under any kind of normal circumstances. And “normal” has a wide, wide range. Only very extenuating circumstances create the exception, not the fact that your friend never calls you. Addiction, moral or ethical failure that goes on without repentance, unmanaged narcissism, flagrant weirdness, or when someone relentlessly devalues YOU in their thinking - all these change the landscape. Those things mean that all bets are off.

But under any kind of normal circumstances, we choose how we think about someone. We choose what we believe about them.

Historically, this has been an area of God-given strength for me. My tendency is to tell myself the story that will make me love you.

My family and husband can bear witness to the fact that I try very hard to be careful about how I even THINK about others. The other sad thing they can also bear witness to is that this is not always returned. (Pssssst: it’s okay. That, in my opinion, is a spot-on sorting mechanism.)

Did you know that your relationship to me is EXACTLY the sum total of the thoughts towards me that you have entertained? Your thoughts will dictate your experience of me.

Have you ever had your care or concern or good intentions seemingly “bounce off” of the person you were trying to encourage? This is why. They literally do not feel your love. They absolutely can’t see the small gestures that normally are noticed and cherished. When someone is determined to choose a story that offends them, nothing you can do will change the perception.

Every single one of us chooses our lenses through which we see. Every single one of us chooses how we hear - not just what we hear, but how we hear it! This is why Jesus said, “Be careful how you hear…” (Luke 8:18). Another word for this combination of how we see and how we hear is our “perception”.

I will never forget someone saying to my husband (who was attempting to restore the relationship, while not compromising his own integrity within himself - so often, a leader has to let go of a relationship with “the one” when hanging onto it means possible harm to “the many”) this person said, “Well, Tim, you always said that someone’s perception is their reality. My perception is my reality.”

This person thought they had my husband “dead to rights”. But what they did not know that we had long ago been taught by a seasoned leader, that when someone begins to use your own words against you, they are likely committed to their offense. It’s what the teachers of the law did to Jesus - no pastor is the exception, if Jesus was not the exception. (Matt. 26:61)

In that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “So be it.” And a great weeping came over my spirit for them. How horrible, to be limited to your perception of reality.

I have no control over your perceptions. They will be your reality because your mind will always find proof for what you are thinking.

But (here’s the good part) I have exquisitely beautiful authority over my perceptions. I can choose what I think about you.

The goal: No one will believe better about you than me. They might believe AS I do, but they won’t believe sweeter or better. I see in you such gifts and strengths and possibility.

You’d have to prove me wrong - and trust me, a handful have done that. However, they’ve had to go out of their way.

But having come all the way out of a season of separating the precious from the worthless (Jeremiah’s words in scripture), and finding out who was going to prove me wrong, I can feel my heart coming full circle.

Still believing the very best, most beautiful things concerning the ones God has placed in my sphere. You should be someone who feels so blessed to be one of those women! That’s my goal in this life of tending middle friendships. Riches truly do not consist of the things we have or in our savings accounts, but in the friendships we possess.

If I’ve been thinking about my friend in ways that lower her value, if I have given voice to those thoughts to anyone else - well, then I really do not deserve that friend in the first place.

Whatever it is that she did or did not do, I have chosen how I will think about her, if I have made circumstances mean something devaluing. I am the one who chose a response that isn’t friendship at all.

The only option I have is to fix it fast (life is short) or lose something of unfathomable value: a clear conscience where it concerns a friend, and thus I have lost the friendship.

That’s poverty.