The best kind of friend you can have is someone who will cry with you when you cry and celebrate with you when you're joyous. What amazing bonds can form when a friend is so sympathetic to where you are emotionally!
I have three friends like that now, and what a treasure they are! How grateful I am for them!
During my last bout of struggles, a friend from church prayed with me when I was going through a particularly hard time. She seemed to feel what I was feeling and thus knew exactly how to pray. When I turned so dramatically, she felt my joy too - because she too knew what that kind of joy was like. She was able to celebrate with me. How good it is when you're feeling overjoyed to have someone share with you in it! We need people to share our feelings with, don't we? The good stuff as well as the bad stuff. It's so good to be understood. And yet, so often we're not. Understanding people can be so hard to find, especially when we most need them.
How often haven't you felt alone with strong feelings - whether it be pain or joy - with no one available to share with? And how good it is to have someone you can call - someone who cares! I wish everyone could have friends like that at times like this. Someone to comfort them. Someone to remind them of God's love. Someone to pray with.
I'm glad for our Living Room ministry, because here, at least twice a month, people with emotional problems can share their pains and their joys. Here we are ready to hear and to be there for each other. We have a meeting coming up on Friday and I pray that we will be in sympathy with each other - whether that means to cry with each other or to celebrate joys. I know we will be.
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2 comments:
Dear Marja,
Thank God for blessing you with such a precious friend. It is indeed very important and a great blessing to have friends who can pray with us and weep with us when we weep and rejoice with us when we rejoice. Thank God for the ministry of Living Room too offering mutual supports to those in need.
I thank God for blessing me with such a precious friend too in the form of an elderly church aunty. She is in her 70s but strangely the Lord brought us together and our friendship has deepened over the years. We are able to share very freely and pray for one another. She always said she thank God for a good friend like me and it humbles me that she takes me as a good friend :) I thank God for her love, her sharing of her experiences with me of how the Lord has led her and her counsels whenever I need it. Truly such friends are special treasures from God!
I am thankful that I have a friend in you too :) It is always an encouragement to read your post and of course your book! May God continue to bless you with many good friendships.
With love in Christ,
Nancie
Hi Nancie,
When you said "it humbles me that she takes me as a good friend," I thought to myself how I feel the same way about my friends. I need my friends so much, but it's so wonderful to hear that I'm important to them as well.
About my friend who is in hospital right now: I'm offering her the kind of support I've received from others and I value her so much. We love talking about what God means to us. We have experience with depression in common, though she suffers far more than I do. And we have our faith in common. As a result she's very important to me. I share in her pain and in her joy.
marja
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