Poem : Friends

I fear it’s very wrong of me,
And yet I must admit,
When someone offers friendship
I want the whole of it.
I don’t want everybody else
To share my friends with me.
At least, I want one special one,
Who indisputably,

Likes me much more than all the rest,
Who’s always on my side,
Who never cares what others say,
Who lets me come and hide
Within his shadow, in his house —
It doesn’t matter where —
Who lets me simply be myself,
Who’s always, always there.

– By Elizabeth Jennings

A Good Week!

This week started

and ended well:)

Return on Investment

The term return on investement is a financial term. Recently though, I have been thinking a lot about it on a personal front. I heard the term “return on investment” when I was in college. The basic idea is that you get something back for what you have invested in – and mostly it is relation to money.

The last few months or rather last year I have been equating the term with people. Living in a pandemic can teach you a lot of valuable lessons. I love building new relationships and nurturing the ones I have. Last year I benefited from investing in some good friendships. I have seen the blessing of taking the time and talking to friends, checking up on them and having deep conversations. I have seen the benefit in investing in friendships and at the same time, letting go of some that were harmful or rather stressful.

Anyways, I know I have not been writing a lot lately as work has been mad busy and I end up just resting and catching up on sleep on the weekends. Hopefully I should get a little better in keeping my blog updated 🙂

Social Interactions

Last couple of weeks things have started opening up in the city. Have been able to step out for a cup of coffee and catch up with friends for lunch. I remember a time when I did not have to deliberate as much on making plans. After staying indoors for almost 2 years now, with the on and off lock down situation, I am thankful everytime I step out of the house 🙂

PC Credit : Naiesha, Nidhi and Me 🙂

Blessings:)

I was going through my pictures today searching for a joyful memory.

This is one of my favourites as I was extremely happy (as you can clearly see) to be with my two dearest friends, my sister and my mentor Lisa (she is the one that took the photo).

I needed to be reminded of God’s goodness in my life, and I needed that especially today:)

Friendships

I have always treasured my friends. The lock down has made me value them even more. I see the blessing of having different kinds of people in my life. I am waiting and hoping that the situation here in India gets a little hopeful, that we will be able to at least gather in small numbers. For now I am thankful for technology and that I can still keep in touch with them 🙂

The Story behind the Picture

A few days ago I had posted some photos of my colleagues and how I miss catching up with my friends. That got me thinking on maybe I could do a limited series of “Story Behind the Picture”. As the camera is now easily accessible, we tend do click random pictures without thinking. So I thought why not post a photograph every Friday and write its backstory.

To kick off the series, here is the first one. This is my best friend Nidhi. As you can clearly see we share a crazy relationship ( most of the time we are as goofy as it can get;). I met her in March 2013 in KPMG and have been friends since then. She has been such a blessing to me, and even though we now live in different cities we still manage to keep in touch:)

This photo was taken during one of the Indian festivals called “Diwali” where we all come traditionally dressed to work. As we usually don’t get dolled up, we decided to click some photos. Obviously most of them turned out as crazy as the one above 😝.If I am not mistaken I framed this and gave it to her on her birthday after a few years😂😂

Anyways hope you enjoyed this post and let me know if you have suggestions for future ones:) Have a great weekend!!

Repost: It’s Not Friendship Without Sharing

For the first time it dawned on me that maybe my tendency to close myself off from others wasn’t protecting me; maybe it was hurting me.

During my early adulthood (high school and beyond), I had many friends. At least I thought I did. These are the people I went to school with, hung out with, watched movies and played games with. I had a good time with them. I was a private person, though, so I didn’t share much about my personal life and daily difficulties. When I was struggling with morality and relationships, I didn’t mention it. When I was dealing with stress and anxiety, I kept it to myself. When I could have asked for help, I instead tried to work problems out on my own.

Most of my friends, on the other hand, had no trouble sharing. They would tell me about their relationships, their problems, and ask me for advice. I was great at giving advice — the Solomon of my high school pals, you might say. I took on this adviser role without really realizing what that meant, and I became the epitome of wisdom and goody-two-shoedness.  The problem with that is, as an adviser, I felt like my life should look perfect to be a good example to my friends, so admitting weakness to these people wouldn’t be OK. (I wonder if pastors feel this way most of the time; they have so many people looking up to them they must feel this pressure one hundredfold.) Taking on this role enforced my quietness.

Bottled up

I remember one evening sitting with one of my friends and chatting, when she admitted that she had feelings for a boy in our class, someone in our friend group. She talked about how she was confused because they had so little in common and was wondering if that mattered — were feelings enough? As soon as she mentioned his name, my heart scattered into hundreds of butterflies because I had a crush on the very same boy; I was also feeling frustrated about it for a variety of reasons. Instead of admitting that, instead of returning the honesty and openness she showed me, I bottled my feelings up, nodded at her confession, forced a concerned look onto my face, and gave her the best advice I could. And no, no matter how much I wanted to, I didn’t tell her they would be awful for each other and she should definitely look for someone else. I was miss goody-two-shoes, remember? I don’t remember my exact words, but they were probably something like “wait and see if the feelings continue.”

I was having similar frustrations and those horrible teen emotions, but I shoved them deep down because I didn’t want to seem weak. I didn’t want someone to know something so personal about me, because giving them that information was putting power in their hands.

My desire to appear perfect and my unwillingness to trust others created more of a chasm than a bridge in my relationships. I didn’t recognize at the time that being human, making mistakes, and struggling with life are important things to talk about in order to relate to one another.

Sharing with others

It wasn’t until after university that I really understood what it meant to be friends with someone. After a year of living and working in a city, I joined a church care group where we were encouraged to personally share with each other every week. I let my leaders know this was something I was not used to doing and it might take me a while to learn how. For the first few months, I mostly sat back, watched and listened as the other members shared their struggles and received not judgment, but support from the other group members.

For the first time it dawned on me that maybe my tendency to close myself off from others wasn’t protecting me; maybe it was hurting me. Acts 2 talks about the fellowship believers can have with each other, about the importance of community and support, and I was missing out on that. I started challenging myself to share my thoughts and feelings, to let others in on a bit of my life.

It was soon after that I experienced a time of intense stress and depression due to some outside circumstances. It wasn’t the first time I’d been through something like that, and I braced myself for the worst.

And it wasn’t fun. But I was shocked by how much easier it was with others surrounding me, willing to listen and help in any way they could — from having me over for dinner when I didn’t feel like cooking, to making me go out on a walk with them so I would get exercise, to just listening to me explain what I was going through.

People cared about me. About me! I didn’t have to be the strong one. I could be weak, I could let down my barriers, and my friends would help me survive the awfulness. It’s not always good — trusting other people means you will get hurt sometimes, because people are human. But it’s so much better than the lonely alternative. God didn’t create us to live without each other, and I am thankful for that.

By: ALLISON BARRON

Original Post on Boundless.org

Copyright 2017 Allison Barron. All rights reserved.