Recently, I found a pic of me, all chubby and smiley at 3 years old, standing in front of my cousin’s pool. My cousin’s family and my family lived on the same lane, called O’Neill Lane. Everyone living on that lane had the last name of O’Neill.
As a kid, it felt rather “bougie” to have access to a pool every single day of the summer. At the time, I basically thought we were the Ewings on Dallas.
Note: We definitely weren’t the Ewings. But with a well of extended family that ran as deep as it ran wide, we had wealth in relatives.
What’s more, I had a good number of friends.
At 18, I left O’Neill Lane for the university 50 miles “down the road.” While there, I began dating one David Strong. When things turned serious, we started talking about marriage. Since David was in the process of becoming an officer in the United States Air Force, I knew that hitching my horse to his wagon meant we’d most likely leave Oklahoma.
Sure enough, after marrying, we moved to our first duty station in Ohio. About 10 minutes after arriving, my husband left town for training. I still remember looking out our apartment window and thinking about how I went from knowing almost everyone to knowing not a single soul.
What I know now is that making friends is an art and a skill, and back then I didn’t have much of either. Why would I? Because I’d organically grown up with friends, by and large, I never had to make them. And let me tell you, in those early years of living away from O’Neill Lane, I made mistake after mistake that completely sabotaged my efforts to find new friends in my new state.
Here are three ways I sabotaged my effort to make friends — and how I learned to supercharge my friendships instead:
1. I expected others to put in the work to become friends that I wasn’t willing to put in myself. When I transferred as a senior music major to a college in Ohio, I assumed it would be obvious to those within my small music school that I was the new person. Therefore, I expected other people to introduce themselves to me and welcome me into their circles. I didn’t realize I had to put in the work myself to “go first” in that regard. And while this was hard because it was new to me, it was still easier to do in an environment full of people around the same age and stage of life. The older we are, the harder this is because we have to be more intentional about meeting people.
But whether you’re 18 or 80, when you’re diligent to put in that time and effort, you will reap the rewards of a harvest of friendships.
2. I adopted a victim mentality. When my efforts to connect were rejected, I adopted a victim mentality; I coughed up excuse after excuse as to why I couldn’t make friends.
- I can’t find friends here because no one is interested in knowing me.
- I can’t find friends here because people aren’t as friendly as they are in Oklahoma.
- I can’t find friends here because all the people already have their people.
And while some of that was absolutely true (when you transfer colleges as a senior, people do already have their people!), I let those excuses be the beginning and end of the matter. I was like the invalid by the Bethesda pool who wanted the waters to heal him, but when Jesus asked, “Do you want to get well?” he made excuses. The invalid was genuinely handicapped by his circumstances, but with Jesus, he wasn’t completely helpless. When Jesus told the invalid to “Get up!”, the man got up. I sensed Jesus asking me to Get up! rather than sit on the belief that I was set up for failure.
And eventually, that intentional time and effort spent “getting up” and meeting others paid off in friendships.
3. I set sky high expectations that no human could ever meet.
Read the rest at my other writing home, (in)courage.
Listen to the article read on our podcast here.
Leave a Reply