warm & weighty

I’m one of those people who sleeps with the window open because I’d rather need to get cozy than be too hot. The other day I woke up freezing. Luckily I sleep with no less than 9 blankets on my bed, and this isn’t even an exaggeration. I grabbed the first blanket I could find. It’s this really soft pink blanket with hearts. Layla Halter has it too. We call it our cozy blanket. So I laid under it, feeling the softness and warmth of the blanket… but I was still cold.

I grabbed another blanket, same softness and coziness. and I still wasn’t warm! TWO cozy blankets and I still felt a chill.

Feeling around my bed, I finally found my comforter and pulled it on top of my two warm blankets and I sighed in comfort. Then I thought, “I guess I needed something warm AND weighty.”

My brain immediately started spinning about how I need my friendships to be warm AND weighty. Follow me on this one, okay? Because it’s good, trust me.

Friends that are warm are like my cozy blanket. They make you feel cozy inside. They say the right things at the right time. They’re fun to laugh with and even fun to talk about deep stuff with at times. Being around them is easy and fun and you just really enjoy being around them.

You know those friends.

They’re the people you text when you’re bored, but not the people you text when you’re broken.

When you’re cold, you can have all the warmth in the world but it’s not enough if it’s all fluffy and soft;  you need weight more than you need warmth. Fluffy-ness is irrelevant when what you are looking for is THICKNESS. You need people whose primary aim isn’t cozy but is safe. The concern isn’t your comfort, but your preservation.

Those are the people who will call you out and be straight shooters. They’ll say “you are acting a fool,” or “you really need to get over this,” or even “you didn’t do anything wrong, so don’t be deceived.” They are the ones who wrap themselves around you – all of themselves – all of their weight and warmth – and they tuck you in and tend to your chills.

Proverbs 27:6 says

Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

As human beings engaging in relationships with other human beings, it should never be our joy, aim, or desire to inflict wounds, to call our friends out, to present our friends with their wrongs or shortcomings. But it is our responsibility and our honor to be the kinds of friends who refuse to let our friends fall and fail while we sit on the bench and wonder if they know their shoes are untied.

We cannot settle for being warm friends who care more for our friends comfort than their well-beings. We have to be brave enough to step into the land of being weighty as well. Friendship that makes a difference is warm AND weighty. We should offer and settle for nothing less.