Author: GT

The Aim of Christian Friendship

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Over the last decade of my life, I’ve realized more fully the importance and true meaning of friendship. As a celibate Christian without the likelihood of future marriage, and for others like me, friendship within community is one of the main ways our sanctification works itself out. Friends point out our strengths and weaknesses, and challenge us to move forward; we need this in order to grow and mature in the faith as we struggle to believe along side of one another.

In the past few years, my friendships have taken a variety of forms. My friends and I have sung karaoke together. We’ve laughed and cried together. We’ve sat in silence pondering the world’s problems. We’ve savored beauty within nature and in the amazing taste of a mocha. We’ve gone on vacations and stayed up late playing board games.

There is immense joy to be had through sharing these moments with friends. That joy is good and should be celebrated. But the exhortation of friends calling me forward is even more important. The friends who most challenge and encourage me serve me to the highest degree, because they call me to walk more closely with God.

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On Bullying

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The moment is burned into my memory. It was night, and I was sitting in my parent’s van. I could easily hear the thumping of the band through the gym walls as they were cheering on my sister and her volleyball team at the community college she was attending. My parents were inside, cheering her on. I was outside in the dark of a cold winter evening—confused, shaken, anxious, hopeless, full of anger, despairing.

The worst thing that my 7th grade mind could think of had just happened.

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Twenty minutes before, I had been playing outside the gym when two college guys approached me. I thought that they were just walking by to go inside, so I was surprised when they stopped in front of me. They were talking to me. But, why? I didn’t know anyone who was in college beside my sister. It took only a moment for the confusion to disappear, as one of them had spouted off, “Hey, aren’t you that fag from [____] town?”

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What I Wish I Had Heard

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Lonely Leaf

It was a chilly, fall afternoon in late October or early November, I can’t remember. There was a bite in the air, a warning sign of the coming brutal winter. I remember sitting in my car, shaking and nervous. I almost couldn’t breathe I was so scared. I was getting ready to have lunch with a man I had met only a few weeks before. He was the pastor at a church I had started attending, after I had just moved thousands of miles to a new city and new community. I didn’t know anyone yet, really, other than my own family.

I had started attending his church, and enjoyed his sermons. He had seemed quite approachable and caring— a good listener. So, after a couple of weeks, I decided to ask him to grab a bite to eat and ask if we could talk. I had a thousand things I was wrestling with at the time, things that I needed to get off of my chest. He kindly agreed to meet with me and to get to know me a little better.

We went in and ordered and nervously sat down in a booth in a corner. So here we were at this sub shop, two strangers carrying on small talk as I walked in circles around the subject, the main reason why I had asked him to lunch in the first place.

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A Letter To Myself, On the Night of My Suicide

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Garrett ThomasGarrett Thomas is from the Heartland and went to college in the Deep South. He is Southern Baptist and enjoys discussing friendship, family, and ethics from a conservative evangelical perspective. Follow his blog: The Night Is Nearly Over / The Day Is Almost Here. Follow him on Twitter @AlexiusIV.

Note to Readers: This came from quite a dark time in my life. But even in the dark, God works, and He is good, so good. May we never assume that everyone is always doing okay. Let’s ask one another and get in each other’s lives. The church needs to be a place of vulnerability and of honesty, where people are directed toward the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Because, no one should ever die by their own hand.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” (Psalm 139:8-12 ESV)

Dear Self,

I’m writing this letter to you. Yes, you. You there, laying on your bed, distraught, lonely, and weary. This is coming from you, your future self. As you can imagine, if you’re receiving a letter from me, your plan didn’t work out like you thought it was going to.

It’s dark out, somewhere around 2AM. The stars are out tonight without a cloud to be seen. The moon is giving her pale glow. Everyone has gone to bed, wanting nothing more than to have a long night’s sleep. They don’t know what you’re thinking about right now; they don’t know what’s swirling through your mind. But I do. I know what you’re thinking; after all, I am you. Right now, as it’s been for so long, you’re weary.

You’re about 18, but you feel as if you’ve lived an entire lifetime’s worth of stress, disappointment, and sadness. You feel as if you’ve let everyone in your life down, even though you don’t know why. You feel as though you’ve always been the black sheep. You feel as if you’re all alone in this tough world with no one to talk to and no one who would listen. Your struggles are so deep, and you feel your brokenness so intently that you don’t even have the faintest idea that anyone might actually care for, or about you. You’ve convinced yourself that if the people in your life were to wake up tomorrow, that no one would miss you. That no one would grieve, or at least not for very long. They’d get over it quickly and move on, showing that you just weren’t that big of a deal to anyone.

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