Want Friends?

February 27, 2025

Friendship.

What does hearing that word bring up for you? Does it make you happy and you immediately think of your close friends and how they have enriched your life? How grateful you are to have them. Or does hearing that word bring up what you long for but don’t have? Does it make you unhappy and left feeling like you are the only person in the world without close friends?

I know from previous conversations with other women, and from my own life that just thinking the word ‘friend’ can bring up a lot of complicated feelings.

Wasn’t it easy when we were little? We could start playing with anyone and in a couple minutes they were our ‘friend’. We weren’t worried about what they thought of us and we didn’t even need to see if we had anything in common to be able to have fun together. It didn’t even matter if we were ever going to see them again. We could be totally happy playing with someone we just met and would never see again, because we were living in the moment.

But then we grow up. We begin to worry about how others see us. We care about having things in common. We care if we are going to see them again. At the same time, our lives become more complicated. We have so many more responsibilities, things that take up time, and people depending on us. When we become moms, our energy is directed into our children and then who has time and energy left for investing in friends—especially if you have to do the work of looking for them.

Yup, friendship can be really complicated as a mom. And yet, I haven’t met a single mom EVER that didn’t desire friendship.  Women are made to connect—to care for others and to be cared about. Being a mom often makes it even more of a necessity to have friendships because the caring for others part gets overdrawn. We have no choice about that part and give and give and give. But our children, no matter how much we love them are not great at caring about us back. Even if they were good at it, they aren’t meant to fill that need for us.

And it is a need. Connecting with others in a personal way and understanding and being understood is a need. We do need friendship. I’m sure you have heard that loneliness has been declared an epidemic. Jeremy Nobel, a Harvard professor defined loneliness as “the gap between the social connections we have and the ones we want.” With that definition, we might all be at least a bit lonely. The quality of our social connections can impact everything from our physical health to our emotional health to our mental health. It’s important. So what do we do if we are feeling lonely or don’t have the social connections and friendships that we want/need?

Well, I want to share with you something NOT to do. I know this one firsthand. As I was learning about myself as a young woman and a mom, I would become aware of needs I had and almost fixate on the need. I would be constantly thinking about what I needed and trying to figure out how to get it. For example, I read the book The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. I learned that I am a quality time person and then I became almost forceful at getting my need met. I also needed quiet time every day. On the days when the kids would nap at the same time, I would get that time I needed. When one of them woke up or something happened to not give me my quiet time, I would get really upset because my need wasn’t being met.

This also showed up in my need for friendship. I would kind of cycle through trying not to think about how I didn’t have the friends I wanted, but it would always surface and then I would become really unhappy. These patterns in me over time caused me to realize that you can’t force your way to getting your needs met. But then it led me to, ‘well if I’m not forcing my way to get my needs met and I still have these needs and they aren’t getting met, what do I do now?’

Strangely enough, for me, the answer was to release all my needs. I know, that sounds crazy….but Matthew 6:32-33 says: “…Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” When Jesus was talking here, he was talking about physical needs like clothes and food. But that phrase “all these things” is sure big enough to hold all our other needs. How kind of Jesus to remind me that he knows I need other things. He doesn’t say, ‘don’t have other needs’. He in essence says that God knows we have other needs. And that they will be met. But there is a catch—we need to seek his kingdom and his righteousness first.

So just like so many other things in God’s kingdom are backwards from what they seem like they should be, so it is with friendship. The more we need it, the less we force it. We give it to God as a need, and then seek him and his kingdom, not our own. And that is how in the end, God can meet our needs. Another verse that reminds me of the same thing is Psalm 37:4. It says: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Is friendship a desire of your heart? Does it fall in the category of “all these things” that you are needing right now? God cares. He knows what you need.

Just like every coaching session ends with action steps, you might have noticed that these posts will end the same way—with a chance for you to take a small step forward. Today I’m going to leave you with a few questions. Feel free to just think about them, or to use them as a journaling prompt.

1.      How might I ‘delight myself in the Lord’ and ‘seek first his kingdom and his righteousness’ this week just a little bit more than last week?

2.      How can I bring my needs to God and trust that he understands them and has promised to meet them?

3.      As I’m waiting on God to meet my needs, is there any way I can reach out to someone else who might be feeling lonely?

Matthew 6:32-33 “…Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”