Matthew 25:1-13
Matthew 16:24-28

“You’ve got to wear your heart just like a gun.” – Jack Ingram, “Beat Up Ford”

There are two costs. Count both before you choose.

If you see deep, close-knit friendships that ride out time’s storms and selfishness and wounds and fatigue and career, you will surely want one. Something so refined possesses great beauty, because it has been purified to a precious degree. But such a beautiful and exquisite thing costs much.

 

If you want it, know this: you will go through rough times. The people you love most will wound you most deeply.

 

You will be asked to give up what you want: a place you want to live, where you put your money, how you spend your time, even with whom you spend it. Not every moment, but often enough that it will frustrate you.

 

You will have to choose one thing over another. So much of moving closer in one relationship demands moving away from others, at least in terms of the time and effort you can give.
You will have to choose to know others and to let them know you, the real you. It’ll terrify you. Visions of betrayals, retreats, abandonment and exhaustion will pass before your eyes. You risk each, and some of these may come, even from people who don’t intend or desire to do so.

You will have to lean toward openness. Holding back parts of yourself will not be an option.

You will be asked, whether by another or by your own heart, to share all. You’ll have to decide if you will.

You’ll have to move at another’s pace. This often means slowing down. This means the excruciating pain of waiting. The group can only move as fast and as far as the weakest link will allow. But without the weakest link, the group is not the group.

Your career, your dreams, and all your relationships will feel the effects of your choice. Your entire life will shift for this friend or this group of friends. Building a life together, with others, means thinking of and planning for others, for the group, not just you. You won’t have the luxury of thinking only of you.

You will have to walk through the painful path of forgiveness when those closest to you, those for whom you have sacrificed, hurt you. When they betray you, leave you, break your confidence, withhold something, manipulate you, deceive or simply disappoint, you’ll have to forgive them. You’ll have to give up your right to hold onto this wrong; you’ll have to cancel the debt. Again. And again. And again.

The cost is exorbitant.

Know this, though: Of those who’ve chosen this path and watched others avoid it, they agree on one thing. The cost of togetherness is minimal compared to the cost of walking alone.

 

So which will you choose?

What would you give up for a friend?
What wouldn't you, and why?
What is the cost of life alone?