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It’s easy to take our friendships for granted, and even our lack of friends. We assume it’s just a personal issue, and that things will be okay if we just focus on our work, marriage, and kids. While we might not notice any immediate negative impacts, we cannot deny the ripple effect that the quality of our friendships, or lack thereof, will have on the rest of our life.
It’s tempting to view our friendships very selfishly – assuming for better or worse they only impact us. But the ecology of our soul is much too sensitive to assume the different parts of our life are isolated and ultimately unaffected by each other. Just as what happens at work will influence how we show up at home, and even what happens in the bedroom will spill over into the rest of the family, so our friendships will impact the rest of our life as well.
We become better men when we have good friends who pour into our lives. They have our backs when evil is seeking to take us out, encourage us to keep going when we feel weary, and fill us with joy by their very presence. On the other hand, bad friends can become a negative influence – leading us to compromise our integrity, neglect our wife and kids, or to otherwise settle for the pleasures of this life rather than making meaningful sacrifices in our life with God.
But the absence of friends also has an impact. While we might avoid direct negative influences, we also miss the many benefits of friendship, which still takes its toll. For instance, we might unwittingly put more demands on our wife – expecting her to satisfy all our relational needs. In the same way, our effectiveness as a father might become dull when we don’t have a few good men to learn from – iron sharpening iron.
In the end, don’t discount the presence of friends in your ecosystem. While their quality or absence might not be immediately felt, they will have a ripple effect on the rest of your life and relationships all the same.
The post Ripple effect of friendship appeared first on Dr. Corey Carlisle.
