My buddy Marcus (the one actually attempting to dance) posted a couple of blog entries recently which got me thinking. I don’t have a lot of time at the moment to expand on my thoughts, but two quick responses…
When it comes to “are you a barfbag friend?” there are definite seasons in which I feel like I’m on either side of that equation. The beauty of being in a (caring) Church family is that, no matter the season you are in, people will be there to simply listen (not giving advice, or suggesting action plans and lists) to what’s going on. They’ll (hopefully) consider how they can help rather telling you “what you should do is…”.
The balance in this though is, how far do you go before gracefully and lovingly telling a friend, “hey I think you need to do something about…”, and for the most part I think we (we being the Church, weather it’s a culture issue or not) are afraid of confrontation, thinking that we “can’t tell someone what to do” – however I challenge that mindset, we should be able to tell someone what we think they can do, but it is all about tact, grace, and options – not “you should do this…” Of course this needs to be done tenderly, preferably out of relationship, yet I do believe there are times, where as brothers and sisters in Christ – we just need to speak loving truth, even if it won’t be well received – otherwise we may find ourselves with a brother/sister who ends up with deeper consequences because no one loved them enough to give them another perspective.
As for Marcus’ “20 of my quirks” post, man, do I have a lot of quirks (just look at me in that picture), many of which are directly tied to my own insecurities… Since I’ve run out of time for this post, I’ll have to do a whole entry on this – I have a lot of history on this blog, I think I’ll find plenty of quirky things to look at over history (or just randomly click on the archives tab on the right).