Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. — Ephesians 4:32
I could tell you stories about friendship mistakes. Like when I’ve not given friends the benefit of the doubt — a surefire way to strangle the life out of a friendship if there ever was one. I can tell you about when I’ve been unreasonably contrary. I’ve been selfish, short-sighted, and just plain cranky. Many friends would’ve kicked me to the curb over my friendship missteps, and really, some probably have. But thankfully, many of my friends are the kind who leave room for bad moods and mistakes.
Sadly, I think our culture today doesn’t have much patience for normal human mistakes. While toxicity or someone chronically mishandling your heart requires firm consequences and boundaries, we need to leave room for the natural ups and downs of relationships. We don’t want to turn the occasional slight, forgotten text, ignored invitation, or season of lopsided friendship into a mountain when it’s really a molehill. We need to leave room for the natural ups and downs of any meaningful relationship and not give up on or throw others away over everyday, garden-variety mistakes and limitations.
- Unless we immediately see enough red flags to fill a Texas amusement park, we don’t throw in the towel at the first sign of a problem.
Pope Francis says we live in a “throwaway culture” laced with disposable relationships.1 We give up on folks when they fall short of perfection. The problem is, we’re all sinners who fall short (Romans 3:23). And I can’t help but wonder if a lot of our loneliness these days is because we’ve given up on friendships — or viewed the natural highs and lows that any relationship goes through — as being the end of the road rather than a simple speedbump along the way. We’d serve ourselves and others well by looking at our friendships with more wisdom and discernment. Not doing so means we risk discarding something that is largely meant to bless us.
If a string of mistakes is starting to grate on you, it’s time to be a grownup and have a conversation about it rather than stew on it or systematically cancel or ghost the other person. I’ve had a friend or two graciously do this to me about my tardiness problem, and it made me change my behavior as I stared in the face of how that behavior negatively affected them! Scripture reflects this by telling us to take our problems with someone straight to the offender first (Matthew 18:15).
When someone’s mistakes bother us still, author and speaker Jennifer Rothschild talks about literally saying the word grace out loud in response to our feelings.
“When you’re offended, ‘grace.’ When you’re ticked off, ‘grace.’ When you’re disappointed, ‘grace.’”2
That word, grace, can act like a deep breath that continually recenters us so we don’t react out of a bad day or a bad mood and elevate something of no real consequence into a real problem.
Sometimes, we must evaluate for ourselves, with prayer and guidance from the Holy Spirit, whether our time and efforts are worth putting into a particular friendship. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. But let’s not be trigger happy and shoot down a possible friendship over something impossibly little in the grand scheme of things.
On our own, we’re not strong enough to turn around a culture that’s so unforgiving of mistakes. But in our own circles, we can spend our time on friendships that yield fruit for us and them. We can show up and make the decision to offer grace more readily — because Heaven knows we need it too.
1. Pope Francis, quoted in Courtney Maers, “Pope Frances decries culture that ‘throws away’ unborn children, elderly, poor,” Catholic News Agency, January 29, 2023, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253492/pope-francis-decries-culture-that-throws-away-unborn-children-elderly-poor; posted by Kari Kampakis, @karikampakis, Instagram Caption, Feb. 1, 2023 https://www.instagram.com/p/CoIKlU8LCWM/.
2. Lifeway Women and Jenn Rothschild (@lifewaywomen), “We say grace in the way we live to each other,” Instagram, April 4, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CqncOeaDY3g/.
Written for Devotionals Daily by Kristen Strong, author of Desperate Woman Seeks Friends: Real Talk about Connection, Rejection, and Trying Again for the Friendships You Need.
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Your Turn
Where have you seen unforgiving culture in action? Does the work of having grace and working through mistakes seem overwhelming? Remember that God is the author of grace, and He has an endless supply. His grace is sufficient for us (2 Corinthians 12:9). Spend some time today soaking in His grace, so you can give it back to others. ~ Devotionals Daily