Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Let’s talk about friendships that end, shall we?
“My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.”
—Charles Spurgeon—
I’ve lost some friends in my life. I bet you have, too. One friend dropped me like a hot potato in fifth grade for more popular girls. Another stopped talking to me over (fake) rumors that I was bad-mouthing her to my boyfriend. (We later reconciled when we discovered high school boys were not worth the drama.) Only one has ended with a formal acknowledgement by both of us, out of deep love and respect for each other, that it was time to let go. Others have simply drifted away through time and circumstance.
I’ve grieved with tremendous sadness the loss of every friendship. Some of them, even ones that went quiet years ago, I’m still grieving. There is no manual for this, at least not one I’ve ever seen. How do you mourn well the loss of a friendship, especially if that friendship never actually died but sort of just disappeared? How do you release a person from your heart when they might not even know you need to? And if you did get to say goodbye, how do you make peace with all the things you wish you would have said at the end?
I’ve spent a lot of time this past year thinking about gentle ways of living — with the world, with others, and with myself. As a storyteller, my mind operates with all cylinders firing at every hour of the day, even in my dreams. This constant movement is fueled even more by the obsessive nature of OCD and perpetual motion of the stories I’ve lived, which rotate in my mind’s eye like a film reel that never stops moving. On top of this, I also have a gift for memory. I can look at a picture and tell you exactly where it was taken, who I was with, what age we were, and what was going on in my life at that moment. The past is always present. I am forever sifting through its stories.
As you can imagine, it’s loud in here, y’all.
The bright side of all of this is that lived experiences offer endless writing prompts and opportunities to assess and heal past wounds. Of course, the shadow side is the same. If I’m not careful, my vivid mind can turn on itself until I’m so overwhelmed by the past not even a make-believe shower conversation with a former friend using all the words I should have said will bring reprieve. The amount of zingers I’ve dropped on my shampoo bottle…
In an effort to be tender with old friendship wounds, I’ve begun to speak more gently to younger versions of myself. When thirty-nine-year-old Wendi tries to shame seventeen-year-old Wendi, I remind her that my oh-so-earnest teenage self was doing the very best she could. When the narrative in my mind about why a friendship ended becomes a loop of “what-if”s and “how-come”s, I stop where I am and say aloud, “You’ve already had this conversation. You don’t need to have it again.” I try to forgive myself for not being perfect, for not always knowing better, and for not using my voice when I didn’t know how. (Or for using it in a way that served no one well.) I turn on a sad song, imagine hopping into my old Camaro next to teenage Wendi crying in the driver’s seat, and take her hand. Then I tell her to look around right now: “This is the life you’re building at this very moment. Isn’t it marvelous?”
Self-awareness is critical to healthy grief, and, yes, there is a such thing. Loss is a part of life and we must learn how to endure it with courage and hope. In order to do that, a bit of internal inventory is necessary. Even if we acted with the best of intentions towards a friend, the impact of our choices on another person is unpredictable. We can’t own another person’s reaction to us, but we absolutely have to be willing to recognize the role we play in the relationship, good or bad. This is not easy work. It can hurt like hell. But it’s the only way to move forward.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in Saint Paul’s letter to the Roman church, where he writes,
“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”1 (Emphasis mine.)
As far as it depends on you.
You can’t be a savior. You can’t be God. You can’t push or argue your way to healing. There is no easy solution to a dying friendship, but there is Saint Paul’s timeless wisdom for the tender-hearted believer desperate to make things better. Seek the encouragement of those who know and love you well. Pray for discernment. Do a little excavating in your own heart and ask God to show you what’s what. Then do the next right thing with the information you have, and be at peace—peace with everyone, Paul says, and that means with yourself, too.
I can think back on a number of moments in my life when it felt impossible for me to be at peace until I knew everyone else was okay: boyfriends, best friends, family members. I would obsess over every word of an argument—or imagined hurt—and drive myself to the brink of panic at the thought of being misunderstood or mischaracterized. I had no real peace because I had no identity outside of other people’s opinions of me. It wasn’t until I’d spent a few years in bi-weekly therapy— prying my fingers from the idol of perfection—that I was finally able to rest in the truth that I am good. Not because I make all the right choices all the time, or because no one is upset with me in a particular moment, but because I am a child of a very good God. His goodness is mine.
That is real peace. And it’s what gives us the ability to live with others…
and without them.
I still think often of the friends I’ve lost over the years. People have walked out of my life and left me wounded and fractured, but I no longer blame myself for their choices. When someone chooses to leave, that is on them. We can—and should—seek forgiveness if we have knowingly caused harm, but we cannot control if someone believes their best option is to walk away.
There may come a time when you are the one who leaves, and I imagine that moment will be as difficult for you as it is for the friend who watches you go. With that reality in mind, perhaps we can now offer grace where, so far, we’ve only held anxiety, anger, or frustration. Perhaps now is the moment we can finally breathe easy and rest, entrusting our futures to the God Who Sees instead of our own imaginations.
Besides, I don’t know about you, but my shampoo bottle needs a break.
Romans 12:18, NIV
This is a good one to start the week with! Love you!