Captivating: Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters

How wide and sweet and wild motherhood

and sisterhood can be

-Rebecca Wells

My Sister, My Friend:

I love the way women friends have with each other. When I gather with a group of women friends, inevitably someone begins to rub someone else's back. Hair gets played with. Merciful, tender, caressing, healing touches are given. Men don't do this with each other. It is unique to women. When women gather, they ask meaningful questions. They want to know how you are. Recipe swapping is all well and good, gardening hints helpful, but women friends unabashedly dive into matters of the heart.

The gift of friendship among women is a treasure not to be taken lightly. Women friends become the face of God to one another--the face of grace, of delight, of mercy.

The capacity of a woman's heart for meaningful relationships is vast. There is no way your husband or your children can ever provide the intimacy and relational satisfaction you need. A woman must have women friends.

Friendships need to be nurtured and guarded and fought for. We need to call one another without waiting to be called first. We need to ask how our friends are doing and really listen to their answers. Listen between the lines. We love our friends by pursuing them--calls, little presents, cards, invitations to go for a walk, to go to a movie. We offer our hearts.

God invites us to risk trusting Him and enter into redemptive friendships with others--to open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt as well as to the possibility of tasting the sweet fruit of companionship. Yet, no matter how wonderful a taste of relational fullness you have, you will want more. If you had an amazing connection yesterday with someone, when you wake this morning, you will want it again. Eve possesses a bottomless well of longing. Jesus alone is the never-ending fount, which can slake her thirst. No other source, no other relationship will full satisfy. God made us that way. On purpose.

--Captivating; John&Stasi Eldredge