It has been refreshing to meet new friends in the last three weeks: first, in Bangkok, then in Los Angeles, and now, with my former-now-present-secondary employer. Food seems to always have been the connecting factor :)
Not to sound utilitarian, but these people have helped me get through a difficult phase in my personal life. It's nice to have broken away from the rut that has been formed in my life over the last couple of months, even but for a moment.
A good friend told me,
"People come into your life for a reason, for a season, for a lifetime."
So, whether these new friends will be a part of me only for a season or for a lifetime, I know they came into my life for a reason. And -- for that, I will be thankful.
I may never see them, again, for we all live in different places (Cambodia, Virginia, and Hawaii) and tend to bounce from one place to the next. We may even lose touch, yet I'm just grateful that some way, somehow, they got to be a friend to me when I needed one the most.
I'm glad I kept an open door for new friendships.
But then...
I got to thinking:
Open doors are not just for new friends but for old ones as well.
Are we just friends with someone when it's convenient? When it's fun? When it's productive?
Are we just fair-weather friends?
Do we stop being friends as soon as our old friend stops being a friend to us?
Do we stop being friends now that we've just made new ones?
I'd argue that most times, that's when our "hostile friend" needs us the most. We don't need to smother, we don't need to always be physically present, we don't need to constantly call or write -- that may just make the other person more annoyed.
Sometimes, the best thing to offer to a hurting friend is the reassurance of an open door.
I was that hurting friend once. I was that hurting daughter. And, I was so desperately though quietly searching for that open door.
I eventually found that door...somewhere else.
And, it wasn't even the right door.
Thankfully, God provided another door, a way to escape--though many years later.
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."
1 Corinthians 10:13
Let's save our hurting friends from entering the wrong doors.
As we make new friends, let's keep in mind not to be fair-weather friends.
I didn't say, be a doormat.
Doormats are for outside of the house, outside the door.
When hurting friends are being rude, hurtful, and treating us like doormats, then that's right where they should stay--outside, with the doormat. We don't have to be that doormat.
We don't need to force them back in, if all they are ready for is to be "on the doormat". We don't even need to meet them there.
But once they decide on their own to come back in because they saw that our door was never closed to begin with, they have shown humility. It may not be apparent outwardly, but their mere actions say it loudly.
When the Prodigal Son returned home to his father, his father didn't condemn him. Instead, he accepted his son with open arms, with warmth, with love, and with a merry heart.
Let's offer our hurting friends the love, warmth, and reassurance of an open door and a merry heart to come home to--to find safety, to find grace, to find God.
Oh that our friends--old and new--may find God's beauty...through us.
Oh to be a part of that beauty.
A beauty that is rare.
A beauty that is heavenly: an open door.
