Friend For A Season, Reason or Lifetime?

Strengthen Relationships with Nurturing Friends

Everyone needs friends. Friendship offers a way to connect, grow and develop in new and exciting ways. The best friendships are nurturing and comfortable for both parties.

Most friendships happen naturally. You meet someone at church, the market, the coffee shop and there is something that attracts you to them. Perhaps they smile or ask you a question and the conversation begins to flow.

It may be that you are co-workers, or cousins or next door neighbors. No matter how you connected or what the initial attraction was, it has to be a win-win situation for the friendship to work long term.

Nurturing Friends

In order to relate at a deep level of friendship, there must be trust and caring. There must be a true heart sharing and knowing that your confidences will be respected. When a friendship is nurturing it encourages success for all. It is not one-sided, but rather encompassing the best for all parties involved.

To nurture is to give tender care and protection to help a plant, animal or person to help it grow and develop the full potential.

Toxic Friends

Many friendships no longer are for your highest good. They do not serve you well and need to be pruned just like you would for a plant that has overgrown and is suffocating the root system.

It does not mean the person is toxic, only that you have grown in different directions. When you have learned all you can learn and taught all you can teach each other, then you should move on so others can benefit from your nurturing friendship.

This is an essay that floated around the internet and I adapted it for my class on friendship.

Friends come to you for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

When someone is in your life for a REASON. It is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are! They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part, or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered. And now it is time to move on.

Then people come into your life for a SEASON. Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons: things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. To have and be a lifetime friend is golden.

Self-Awareness Quiz

1. Do you have friends that are nurturing to you? List them.

2. List the friends who were with you for a reason.

3. List the friends who were with you for a season

4. List your lifetime friends.

5. Have you told your nurturing lifetime friends thank you lately?

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