Day 98: Through Thick and Thin

Then Job answered: I have heard many things like these. You are all miserable comforters. Is there no end to your empty words? What provokes you that you continue testifying? If you were in my place I could also talk like you. I could string words together against you and shake my head at you. Instead, I would encourage you with my mouth, and the consolation from my lips would bring relief. Job 16:1–5

While I was in the process of adopting Missy, a dear friend (who’s also the adoptive mom of an HIV+ child they got to bring home several years before I began our journey) soberly warned me about disingenuous religious people. She said, “Be careful about throwing the pearl of your and Missy’s relationship before the swine of Southern facades. Most of the women you know from church will praise you initially for being such a ‘good’ person and rescuing a baby from certain death in a Third World country. They’ll throw all kinds of accolades in your direction. But just wait until you actually bring Missy home and she goes from being a picture on their refrigerator to being a real-live student in the same classroom as their children. Your Christian friends’ real feelings will come out when they choose whether or not to invite your beautiful little girl to their kid’s pool party.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to her unvarnished candor and wondered if maybe she’d developed a root of bitterness over one bad apple of a mom who was less-than-gracious after they brought their baby home.

But then a few months after Missy came home, we bumped into another mother and her daughter—whom I’ve known for years from church circles—at Costco. After a polite greeting where we introduced our suddenly shy daughters, who are exactly the same age, I watched that mama’s eyes shift and break contact with mine as her countenance hardened into a fake smile. Then I listened in sad dismay while her voice rose into a perky falsetto as she prattled something along the lines of, “When my schedule isn’t so crazy maybe we can get our girls together sometime for a play date!” all the while sticking her arm out like a human guardrail then slowly sweeping her baby girl backwards, away from Missy. And then my straightforward friend’s cautionary advice came rushing back to me like last night’s bean and cheese burrito!

Which, if you’ve ever read the book of Job, sounds a lot like his experience with his pretend friends, too:

You are all miserable comforters . . . in other words, you cover up your true feelings with dishonest prattling and your fake compassion is utterly useless in easing my pain!

Is there no end to your empty words? . . . in other words, the spiritual platitudes you’ve been quoting to me are as useless and temporal as the ash at the bottom of our fireplace or the gum on the bottom of my boot!

What provokes you that you should continue testifying? . . . in other words, please shut your trap because every hokey, disingenuous word that falls out of your big mouth is landing on my last nerve!

Now, I know what you’re thinking—who’s the one with the root of bitterness, now? Let me admit to the fact that yes, that encounter really did pierce me to the core. The false self I saw in that mom made me want to scream. But it also caused me to ponder all my own false moments, and truth be told, as I look back at my past in certain seasons, I’m just as guilty of fakeness in my friendships.

I deeply regret having presented a false self for years to friends and family members, many of whom were emotionally mature and secure enough to love me well—warts and all—yet couldn’t access a real relationship with me because of my own strong stiff-arm of pretense holding them at a “safe” distance. Which is one of the reasons I’m both encouraged and convicted by Job’s pleas for his friends to be more authentic. He was right to call them on all the inauthenticity, just as God is right to call us on ours. Fake is no way to live when it comes to the kind of friendships God wants us to have.

• Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a difficult time.” Who fits that description in your life?
• In which of your friendships do you tend to put on a mask? Why?
• How might you be a more authentic person and friend to those around you? Where do you need to be more authentic with God Himself?