“I realized why these mountain people were shy with strangers. They had never learned the citified arts of hiding feelings or of smiling when the heart was cold. Friendship was dangerous to them because they had built up no protection against it. Once they let you in it must be into the deep places of the heart.”
Isn’t it sad that we have become so “citified” that this describes us to a “T”? We know how to put up a facade. We can hide our feelings so that people believe us when we tell them we are “fine.” We have the ability to smile at those toward whom we really have a cold, icy heart. We have built up walls and barriers so that we have protection against our hearts being hurt by others. That is why we seldom let them into our lives. And we men are more guarded than women.
Our hearts long for a deep connection with others. Some of us might deny this, in that we don’t like the idea of “longing” for anything, but in reality, we have simply trained the idea of needing deep connections out of us. We tell ourselves we are self-sufficient and do not need anyone or anything. But if we will are honest, we know that we all want friends with whom we don’t have to put up a false front.
So we have this heart’s cry for depth, but we instead settle for casual superficiality. We’ve learned how to do it so well, which means our deep need for close connections goes unmet.
If we would be willing to take the chance to reach out to someone for friendship with transparency, we might just find that it is there for the taking. Knowing that there exists the possibility of being hurt makes it hard to take that step of faith, but the potential rewards make the risk worth it. We all need at least one friend with whom you can fully be yourself, no longer having to keep up your guard, having them accept you “warts & all,” willing to listen to you laugh on a good day and complain on a miserable one.
“I came to know a quality of friendship which bears little resemblance to the casualness of our relationships back home. The mountain type of friendship was a tie of substance between people with a sort of [brave faithfulness] about it. It had to do with a time in the past when there was no more final bond than a man’s pledged word; when every connection of blood and family was firm and strong, forged in the past, stretching into the future.”
I want relationships with substance and depth. We all do. So what will it take? Us risking the possibility of someone stepping on us and breaking our trust. But finding that true friend will be worth it. Are you ready to open up and let someone into the deep places of your life? Probably not – at least not yet. But consider taking that first step – begin being more transparent with a few of your closest friends and see how your relationships begin changing. The ones that respond with similar transparency will give you a clue as to who is ready to be a deep friend to you.
(Quotes from the book “Christy” by Catherine Marshall)