• I am a good and faithful friend
• I am a good and faithful friend
• I am a good and faithful friend
• I am a good and faithful friend
• I am a good and faithful friend

There tends to be a pretty good reason for isolation: illness, rejection, global pandemic. Life inevitably grants us time and opportunity for rest, recovery, and remembrance. However, when isolation becomes a lifestyle, it causes more pain than it prevents. My experience of abandonment as a child locked me away behind thick walls of apathy and anger. No one ever wanted to be my friend because I was a toxic person. My life was an emotional minefield, a swamp of sorrows with the stench of sulfur settled heavily in the air. At the time, I had no idea what was wrong with me. It turns out, I had my head so far up my own bottom, I was choking on it. Subsequently, I never learned how to be a good and faithful friend. I was too busy licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself to be truly present for anyone else. Presence, it seems, is the most precious gift we can offer another person. Bearing witness to one another and allowing ourselves to be seen requires courage and relying on a power greater than ourselves. I know I sure don’t have the strength to be seen – not my nasty, oozing, messy wasteland of a self. And yet, grace is sufficient even for me. There’s nothing more I need to learn. I am a good and faithful friend today because I am willing to show up as my true, imperfect, stinking self in spite of my past injuries and current shame.