A Story about friend

Hello new friends!!  My name is Matt, and I am the other side to Kelsey’s story from the past two weeks.  I’m excited Heather and Kelly asked Kels and I to share a bit of the craziness happening in our lives right now and some of the things we are learning through it!  I’m sure you know this after reading Kelsey’s posts, but our friendship has been quite unconventional and our views on relationships are relatively unpopular.  I want to dive into that a little more, but first I think I need to briefly share my side of this crazy story!

The quote above is from a book by C.S. Lewis called, “The Four Loves.”  In it, Lewis explores the nature of the four loves that were all very well known to cultures throughout history.  One of these loves is friendship, and Lewis is even bold enough to say that this love is the happiest of the loves but isn’t experienced by most in today’s culture.

I felt this disconnect in our culture very strongly most of my life.  I always wanted deep friendships – David/Jonathan friendships – but it seemed like everyone else in my life was running from those type of friendships because of what people could think.  I ended up having several friendships that would be considered deep if you asked them, and a bit less deep if you asked me.  Nonetheless, I had great friends in my life.  I didn’t confuse friendship with romance.  My dad is a marriage/family counselor, and I grew up getting marital counseling from the age of 6.  I was the only 6 year old in my class who knew basic strategy for opening up communication in a marriage.  This helped me in many ways growing up, but I got weird looks whenever I would give my teachers relationship advice…  Anyway, I dove into deep friendships but was very comfortable staying out of the dating scene.  I figured that if God knit me together, knew every day of my life before one came to pass, and wants to bring fullness and abundance to me… He probably knows the details around my love life too.  Single or married and the timeline surrounding both was His concern, not mine.

Now, we all know the passage in scripture where Paul says, “If you can stay single, by all means be single” (1 Cor. 7:8).  Lets be honest friends, most of us love to breeze on by that passage without dedicating any thought to it.  Don’t do it!!  I think that the first inference we need to make here is the simple fact that being single is an option.  It doesn’t make us unclean or uncool, nor does it place us single folk beneath the oh-so-desirable married.  I have honestly believed my whole life that the “single” season in life is equally as beautiful as the “married” season.  Living with that perspective, I dove into every adventure I could.  I pursued dreams that were destined to fail without divine intervention.  I took risks, and failed more times than I can count.  I just kept running.  The destination I was running toward was the Lord and His plans, whereas most of my friends were running toward a girl or a boy.  The girl or boy would change frequently, but the goal was the same.  I rarely saw these friends fulfilled, and I never saw a passion for who God created them to be as individuals.