Wise Women Know They Need Good Friends
Karen Swallow Prior
Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom, and Propel Sophia seeks out the voices of truly wise women and asks them to share worked examples of how they express faith in daily life. Pull up a chair at Sophia’s table, won’t you? There’s plenty of space. Learn more here.
The power of strong, flesh-and-blood friendships was made more real to me recently after I was in a serious accident.
If it were not for good friends, I would have spent 12 agonizing hours alone in the emergency room. Because of friends, meals were brought to our home night after night, week after week, during my recovery. Friends gave my husband and family a break from their round-the-clock care of me and, when I was feeling better, took me to work (and the movies) in my wheelchair.
It’s always wonderful to have friends. But now I know just how deep the human need for friends runs.
Yet, developing good friendships can be hard. Most of us go through friendship dry spells. I know I have.
The first time was in junior high. This probably needs no explanation.
The next time was in my sophomore year of college, when I was also a young newlywed. My life looked very different from that of most of my peers.
Likewise, when I began a Ph.D. program, my life had dramatically different contours to those of the other young wives in my small, rural church. Nor were there any Christians in my program of study at the liberal state university I attended. I was lonely for many years. Sure, my new marriage was strong - but a husband can never replace good girlfriends.
As last, I joined a Christian ministry where I finally found women whose interests and personalities meshed with mine. Our little group enjoyed several years of ministry, travel, coffee nights, and deep conversations.
Eventually, a new job took my husband and me to a new state and, once again, I was left without the kind of friends who would grab lunch or go to see the newest play at a moment’s notice.
Once again, I was lonely.
And once again, it took a long time to find my people.
But it happened.
Some of it happened by circumstance, as my current group of friends are women I work with.
But it didn’t happen by accident.
Forming these friendships required—as it often does—risk, investment, sacrifice, and commitment.
• Risk: Sometimes doing something with a potential friend feels as risky as going on a first date. And it’s not dissimilar. Pursuing a new friendship entails the risk of rejection, but this need not be taken personally. Busy-ness, family or work obligations, and many other obstacles can prevent a friendship from “clicking” at any given time. Friendships are to be pursued, but cannot be forced.
• Investment: Some of the strongest bonds come simply from the accumulation of time and shared experience for which there are no substitutes. Even though associations and acquaintances can be formed online, true and lasting friendships depend on some physical presence. One of the first things I did with one close friend was travel on a work-related trip together. This required long hours in a car and sharing a hotel room: quite a risk for a still-forming friendship. But such experiences form cords that can be woven into a strong bond.
• Sacrifice: I’m part of a group of women who go to dinner, movies, and the theater together. We have much in common. But we have many differences, too, including age, race, marital and parenting status—not to mention our taste in movies. Thus, we have each seen a movie from time to time that doesn’t suit our own taste. It’s a small sacrifice (in my case, a huge one if it’s a chick flick!). But lasting friendships require sacrifice.
• Commitment: I don’t have many close friendships, but when I make one, it’s usually for life. I moved away from my oldest friend when we were 16, but we have remained committed to the friendship through both times of closeness and times of greater distance. We usually see one another only once every few years. But when we do, we pick right up where we left off. This owes partly to the initial spark that pulled us toward one another way back when we were just 13—but it’s more because of the commitment we’ve made to stick it out even during the times when one or the other cannot invest. And guess who bought a plane ticket to spend days at my side when I needed help and companionship after my accident? The same friend I first got in trouble with for passing notes during math class in eighth grade.
In my new book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, I discuss the relationship between the word kindness and kin, which share the same root. Essentially, to be kind is to treat someone like family, or kin. This, ultimately, is what a true friend is: someone who is like family. As Proverbs 17:17 tells us, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (NIV).
My recent adversity taught me just how important—and worthwhile--the investment in friendship is.
Karen Swallow Prior
Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is an award-winning Professor of English at Liberty University. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press, 2012), Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson, 2014), and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Literature (Brazos, 2018). She is a Research Fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, a Senior Fellow with Liberty University’s Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement, and a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States.
