Pick Your Battles And Choose Your Friends Carefully..

Daily we all struggle with choices, decisions, and issues of life: family, friends, work and our personal concerns can leave us drained and zapped. And, though I know I can be stubborn and opinionated, I’m learning that sometimes interjecting yourself into a debate, situation or issue is not the best thing to do. For the most part, people are going to do or say what they want to anyway, so my role in many instances is that of listener, encourager, prayer warrior and friend. Most often, people just want their opinions and choices validated anyway. It’s not that I don’t care, but more like I care too deeply and feel too strongly about so many issues of life, that some things can’t occupy space in my life.

Some ‘friends’ are just NOT worth having. People who are complainers, who are consistently negative, who are not encouraging, who I feel only want to ‘use’ me, who are not only disinterested in my faith (or having any faith of their own), but try to pull me from mine, won’t make the cut.

Sometimes you have to let go of some things and some people. I call it ‘cleaning house.’ Sometimes we grow and our friends don’t grow with us. Sometimes so-called friends are envious, resentful or insecure and they are not happy unless you are just as miserable as they are. Bottom line: sometimes so-called friends can suck the life out of you. That’s not good or healthy.

At some point in my life I recognize that I needed to surround myself with encouragers; people who loved life, loved me for me, people who chastise me when I need it, but who let me make mistakes as well because they realize that’s part of life, people who I don’t need to talk to every day to confirm to them that I love them and that I’m praying for them, as I know they are for me. Those are the kind of friends that surround me now. Those are the kind of friends who help me be the best I can be, and understand when I say I need to pick my battles.