Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

I love submission because I know it protects me.

That’s not supposed to still be true once you’re a grown-assed adult.

Yes, Jesus said to forgive people seventy times seven, which is all but infinite forgiveness. However, we need to be guarded about who we bring into our closest circle.

It’s so backward to find this in the last 15% of the book! This is what I have been saying throughout. If you do all the things in the first part of the book, you are absolutely NOT guarding your heart! You will end up in relationships with people you will wish you had never met because you’ll already have intertwined yourself with them before you realize what a bad fit or bad person you got hooked up with. It’s the same reason it’s good advice not to have sex with people you don’t know, or not to marry someone you met two months ago.

But if this friend has been a big part of your life, someone that you have trusted and gone deeper with, say the hard thing that needs to be said.

This is why her friend from the first chapter had to “break up” with her. They had gotten into this super-intense weekly or twice-weekly, exhausting fire pit thingy. Maybe she was an introvert, like me, and she was like, “I gotta get away from this circle of nutjobs…” I remember once in high school, my friend Sondra said she quit seeing a guy because, “He always wants to have these deep conversations about ‘God and The Universe’. It’s okay once in a while, but sometimes I just want to have fun.” Yeah, that. Not every meeting with friends (individually or collectively) needs to be this soul-laid-bare, cry-and-hug fest…in fact, I don’t really want that at all.

Ask deep questions. Listen. Tell people what you are grateful for in them. Share the real stuff. Talk about Jesus. Do fun stuff together.

No, please don’t. Let’s just do fun stuff together. If I like you, and trust you, which will take at least three or four years for me to assess, *then*, maybe I will do a few of the other things listed here. But if someone I barely know tries to probe me with deep questions, I’m gonna shut that shit right down.

Wait for friends to call you.

Okay: this I agree with, but only to a point. It is true you must initiate some contact if you want to spend time with certain people. However, if it *always* has to be you, this “friend” may very well be hoping you will go away. You gotta give people the chance to reciprocate, too. If they *never* reach out to you, they either don’t care much about seeing you at all, OR they have *stuff* going on in their life that’s using up all their bandwidth and meeting around your fire pit is not a priority.

Have lots of opinions about your friends’ lives.

This is what I think happens when you do that crazy thing of “inviting people to speak into” your life. In most cases, the saying about opinions being like assholes is accurate. My friends don’t have to do everything the way I think they should and I’m definitely not inviting people to freely bestow their opinions on me unless I ask. That’s why I think that financial accountability with your small group thing is NUTS. Unless one of them is a financial planner or an accountant, I don’t care what their opinion is on whether this is a good car to buy or whether I should shop at Harris Teeter or Aldi.

told the truth about a situation I was going through, and in response, I didn’t feel heard. In fact, one of those friends not only didn’t listen well but she one-upped my pain. Have you ever had this happen? You say that something is really hard in your life, and the other person responds by telling you about something she is dealing with that is even harder? It stung.

See, but this is what I mean. A lot of people (I’m one of them) don’t want every outing to have to be Deep Drama. I would bet money that friend was trying to lighten the mood back up because she probably thought something like, “oh no! Jennie’s preparing to turn this nice lunch into a gut-twisting cry-fest! I’m going to deflect it so we can just go back to being friends having lunch.”

We have to fight to hold on to our people. Let’s notice the traps the enemy is using to divide and distract us from healthy relationships. I promise the battle is worth it!

Basically, this is an entire book telling you that you should pour yourself constantly in to other people and you will be repeatedly hurt, rejected, uncomfortable and misunderstood. “But it will be worth it!” I mean…sure people whom you love might hurt you and you might hurt them, but personally I don’t want that to be a regularly-occurring facet of any of my relationships.

By the time Zac and I arrived at small group after Unnamed Kid’s last incident, the other couples in our group already knew. It happens when your small group, your neighbors, and the parents from your kids’ schools are the same people.

Personally, I would hate this. I do not want everyone to know my business, and least of all, church people.

You and I don’t need fifty people to know our hard, but we do need a few who are in it with us.

And yet, it certainly does sound like she has more than just a few who know her hard. Because the small group people all know and her sister-in-law knows, which presumably means most or all of her extended family knows, not to mention her husband and the other kids in the family who presumably know and usually *do* need to know. And when something public happens and *that* is your hard thing, you can’t help it; everyone will know. When your baby dies, everyone will know. When you have cancer, everyone will know. If you have a family member who screws up and goes to prison, everyone will know. The best you can hope for in those situations is that you have at least one dear friend, who is not part of the problem, who will listen non-judgmentally and will help you in practical ways.

What’s more, the tenor of that group has taught me how to invite others into my junk. I think of my sister-in-law Ashley, who regularly reminds me that whenever I’m sad, she’s

It actually hints at inappropriate boundaries. While in one sense, sure, we all hate to see people we love hurting - witness my recent murderous rage when someone was cruel to my son - but the much healthier boundary is to realize that, usually, someone else being sad is just someone else being sad. It’s not up to me to keep all my friends happy, to make them happy if they currently are not, or the reverse.

don’t mean anecdotally, but rather truly entered in—no longer do you bother with boundaries and barriers. They are yours, and you are theirs.

Hahahaha! Guess she knew what someone would say…

So, that’s the first caution: don’t go friending the whole freakin’ world.

She *says* that, but her stories also *sound* different. She has the nosy-assed people in her small group, leaving no corner of her life exempt from public perusal; the fire pit friends she mentioned (except for the one who told her directly she was getting off the crazy train); church friends, like the one she pretends not to compete with but actually does by blowing up her phone; family members, other friends, IF: Gathering friends…

Every day of every week of every year I live, there is something that feels hard. I’m not trying to be morbid here.

I think this is not a good way of looking at life. Unless you just suffered a major shock - your kid died, your husband was carted off to prison for CSA materials you knew nothing about, you were just diagnosed with cancer - you should really be pretty okay most days. I mean, sure; I don’t like calling Verizon and arguing about my bill any more than the next person, but the small “hard” stuff, the garden-variety bad stuff, should not get enough head space to register as “hard” and color your assessment of your every day.

the one friend I have found to be most consistent, the one who sees me at my worst and still loves me, is Jesus.

🙄 He’s really hard to reach by text, I have found.

Jesus makes the best best friend. He has never ignored me, cut me out, shamed me, or rolled His eyes at me. Not once. He always listens, always cares, always tells me truth.

I always, sincerely wonder how people can say this. Jesus can’t pick you up for your chemo appointment. Can’t recommend a great hairdresser. Can’t share with you his joy about a new relationship or a pregnancy or getting a dog. He’s no good for a Christmas party, a round of Bunco or a sleepover weekend at the lake house. How can anyone think Jesus is their best best friend when it can only ever go in ONE direction?