What I Want My Single Friends to Know About Marriage

June 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Michael and I just recently celebrated our tenth anniversary, and this article seems timely in its publication; friendships between marrieds and singles are necessary, beautiful, and valuable in the Kingdom of God. You can read the article in its entirety here, at Today’s Christian Woman.

What I Want My Single Friends to Know About Marriage. Great insights for marrieds and singles!

When I got married ten years ago, there were certain things I expected—things like love and struggle and joy and pain. But what I didn’t expect was that those emotions might not only occur within my marriage, but also between me and my single girlfriends. As I learned what it looked like to be married to Michael, I was also trying to learn how to re-build friendships with the women in my life.

It wasn’t easy. Suddenly, I was in a different stage of life than they were, navigating different questions and concerns. Our seasons of life were different, and we had choices to make: Would we stay connected, work for deeper friendship even in the midst of life change? Or would we slowly fade apart?

Five Honest Admissions

Here are the things I wish I would have said ten years ago to my single friends—and the things I still may need to say to my single friends. Because friendship in any season is worth the time and intentionality it requires—even if it does get a little awkward as we figure things out along the way.

1. Sometimes I don’t know how to relate to you. I know that sometimes you feel like you can’t relate to my life situation—and I actually feel the same way about you. Our seasons of life are markedly different, now, and I’m not always sure how to connect.

Maybe it’s because I was the first among my friends to get married, and it was as if an invisible wall went up in some of my friendships—a wall I didn’t know how to break through. Some of my friends were jealous; some were unsure of how our friendship would shift now that I was a Mrs. It made me gun-shy, and I felt the shift. I worried that I would misstep in my friendships with single women.

How do we relate now? Singles and marrieds--building a strong friendship is worth it. #marriage #friendship Share on X

What I’m saying is that I’m not sure what stories you want to hear from my life. Should I avoid all of the stories about our marriage? I don’t know how painful it feels for you when I bring up my husband in conversation. And I have no idea if you want to talk about your singleness of not.

I might need you to tell me; I might need you to open up the conversation and share where your heart is with singleness, with marriage, with Jesus, with the church. And I might need to share with you about my marriage. We might just need to work through the awkwardness together. Because I want to love you well, just as I want to be loved well by you. But I’m not always sure how you want me—and maybe even need me—to relate to you. Please tell me. I won’t be offended. I’ll be thankful.

2. Yes, it really is wonderful. And yes, it really is hard. Even though I’m not in your shoes, I know that being single can be really, really hard. What I need you to hear from me is this: sometimes marriage can be hard, too.

Yes, I am grateful that I have someone to come home to, to lean on, to process life with, to live alongside. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Michael’s sharpening and loving presence in my life. But marriage is not all sunshine and roses. It is a daily choice to keep our communication open, our love pure, our dreams shared. We are two different people with sometimes markedly different views of how we should live, eat, work, and parent. And it can be exhausting to try and work things through one more time, when it would feel easier to throw in the emotional towel.

So there are going to be days when I need you to help me cherish my vows, and days when I need to help you trust God’s promises, too. I think we can help and love each other in these places if we can make room for each other’s struggles, no matter how different they are.

I need you to help me cherish my vows, and I need to help you trust God’s promises, too. #marriage #friendship Share on X

3. There are days when I envy your singleness. I relinquished a lot of freedoms at the altar because the marriage vow necessarily requires tethering: I can’t up and go whenever I want, I can’t choose a new job based only on my personal desires. I’m not free to spend money any way I want, or use my time solely in the ways I see fit. Those were freedoms I traded in order to have a healthy marriage. And while I know we are all called to shape our lives around Christ and live accountably to him and his church, there are days when your life seems very alluring to me: You don’t have to make decisions with someone else, or shape your life around another human. Some days, your freedoms sound luxurious to me. I know you might be rolling your eyes right now, but it’s true.

Paul warns about this reality in the Scripture—it’s not like I went into marriage blind:

I want you to be free from anxieties. . . . And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. (1 Corinthians 7:32, 34-35)

I made this choice when I got married—to have, to a certain degree, my attentions divided between Jesus and my husband, my family. I seek to keep Christ at the forefront of my life, and often serving Jesus means serving my husband and family. But there are days when I feel torn in my attentions, and I look at your life with longing.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

Filed Under: Friendship, God, Life, Marriage Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Creating Friendships that Last

June 2, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The Secret to Creating Friendships that Last www.annswindell.com

This is the start of my newest piece for RELEVANT Magazine.
You can read the article here.

In a world bloated with quick fixes, instant gratification and social media profiles, it can be hard to know how to build—and keep—lasting friendships. And while we may want to portray a particular side of ourselves online, the truth is that we need friends who know us here and now, in the middle of our mess and our daily routines. And we need to be those types of friends, too.

The secret to these kinds of friendships is actually pretty simple: You just have to show up.

The secret to the best kind of #friendship? Keep showing up. Share on X

The Scriptures calls us to draw near to Christ and to draw near to one another: “let us draw near [to Christ] with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” and “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:22, 24-25). As people of faith, we are called to live so that we are encouraging those around us toward love and good deeds. I think this comes most obviously and importantly through deep, meaningful friendship.

Here’s how to start—and build—friendships where we spur one another on to godly lives and where we reflect God’s love to one another:

Show Up With a Meal.

A friend doesn’t have to be sick to need a meal. A new baby doesn’t have to be born, and it doesn’t have to be a holiday. Many times, we need a friend to care for us—spiritually and practically—in the midst of our everyday lives when things just feel like a little too much to handle. I’ve taken meals to friends who are emotionally overwhelmed, to friends who have sick kids and to friends who just need a break from adulting. If you don’t cook: Take a pizza. Breaking bread together—sharing meals—is something that marked the early church, and it’s not hard to understand why. Sharing a meal together feeds both the body and the soul. It’s not hard—it just takes intentionality.

We all need friends who give us a break from adulting. Share on X

Show Up With Prayer.

Hanging out and talking, watching a game together, laughing together—these are good gifts of friendship. But being friends who follow Jesus also offers us the rich opportunity to pray not only for but with one another. I’ve found that my times of prayer with friends have been some of the deepest and most steadying parts of our friendship.

Can it be awkward, especially if you’ve never prayed together? Sure. But it can also crack open the opportunity for deeper relationship and trust. Maybe you can’t help your friend practically, with her need or with his struggle. But you can pray with your friend, right there, asking God to meet that need and provide grace in the struggle. If you don’t know what to pray, consider getting a copy of The Book of Common Prayer and praying a liturgical prayer together. It doesn’t have to be fancy. But when two or three of us get together in the name of Jesus, He’s there with us (Matthew 18:19-20). When we pray, He hears us, and moves on our behalf.

Read about other ways to show up here, at RELEVANT.

Filed Under: Friendship, God, Guest Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

The Scars We Carry: Women as Warriors

October 14, 2015 by 25 Comments

 

The Scars We Carry: Women as Warriors

I shuffled into the locker room at our local gym a few days ago, searching for an open locker to dump my bags in before heading upstairs to a treadmill. There’s no shortage of women changing in the locker room, and as I found a pod of lockers that were mostly unused, I walked past an older woman who was bending over to change. Without intending to, I saw down her shirt. And what I saw surprised me.

She was missing her right breast. Even at a glance, I could see the scar; there was a shell of padding filling that side of her bra. And I knew, in half of a second, that this woman had undergone breast cancer and had needed a mastectomy to remove cancerous tissue. My grandmother underwent a mastectomy; I remember hearing her talk about her expensive bra that was filled on one side with padding rather than her own flesh.

And in that locker room, I realized that this woman changing next to me had walked through the pain and the fear of cancer. She had needed her flesh cut off and sewn up. She had been delivered news that brought nothing but hardship and had been given a diagnosis that could have ended in death. And she had not only survived, but she was here at the gym, using her miraculous body that lived through that cancer to swim and move and work.

This courageous, strong, wrinkled woman next to me was a warrior.

She had lived. She had won. And nobody else knew that under that padded bra was a woman with more fortitude than fear.

Before I left the locker room, another woman stood in front of the mirror and began blow-drying her hair. She was wearing a bra, but no shirt, and underwear, but no pants. Unselfconsciously, she stood and dried her hair as other women walked in and out. And I noticed a long, thin scar on her lower abdomen. I know that scar; I bear one myself. My daughter was pulled through that cut in my stomach when she would not come out otherwise. Whether this woman with the blow dryer had one child or many pulled out of her, I do not know. But she will carry that scar forever.

This confident, mighty, toned woman next to me was a warrior.

She was a mother. She had birthed life, made room in herself for another. And nobody else knew that under her shirt was a woman who, like all mothers, has made sacrifices too numerous to count.

I sat down on a bench, suddenly overwhelmed by the power and beauty of the women around me. These were survivors I was walking among—saints, heroes, lovers. Women who share in this sisterhood of scar-bearing.

We all bear scars. Mine is 6 inches across, snow white, a thin line of remembrance an inch below my hip bone. But I have others, scars less visable. Scars where pain has been seared over by love, or by time, or by prayer.

Several days a week, I stand in that locker room and don’t think about the other women around me. I see them peripherally, changing their clothes and doing their hair. They probably see me in the same way. But here, in this locker room, I had been given a glimpse of the scars that each of us carry. Whether from breast cancer or c-sections, whether from broken hearts or anxious minds—we bear the scars of being women, and of living in a shattered world. Most of us can hide them under bras and shirts and acceptable words. But we are, all of us, warriors.

Those who have survived. Those who are living. Those who are mothers, sisters, wives, and friends.

Those scars do not define us. They have marked us, yes. But they can remind us that we have more fortitude than fear, and that we can make room in our bodies and our hearts for life to be birthed. In fact, we can be proud of our scars: being a scar-bearer points us to the truth that scars can be signs of life—even of love.

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5 Meaningful Ways to Say Goodbye

June 9, 2015 by 4 Comments

The world we live in is increasingly mobile, and in this season of life, many of us may find ourselves moving for school, a job, a relationship, or even for an adventure.

Or, we may find ourselves waving goodbye to our dearest friends as they drive away to a new place while we stay put. Compared to a hundred years ago, it is remarkably simple to transport our possessions across the country. What is less simple is navigating the change in friendships when we — or they — move away.

However, saying goodbye — and learning how to do that well — is an important aspect of any meaningful friendship. How do we do that? How do we say goodbye to the people who have shaped our lives in a powerful way?

Here are five ways to say goodbye intentionally.

5 Meaningful ways to say goodbye (1)

1. Acknowledge Change.
Some of the deepest pains from friendship come when someone feels forgotten or left behind. If you are moving across the world — or even across the state — be honest about the fact that your friendships will change. Talk with the people who will feel your absence most strongly and have a heart-to-heart about the fact that you can’t really know how the friendship will shift.

Saying goodbye doesn’t mean that anything went wrong in the friendship or that the friendship has failed. It simply is a reality of the world that we live in. Openly acknowledging and discussing that a change is coming in your relationship will make the transition clearer, if not necessarily easier.

Saying goodbye and learning how to do that well is an important aspect of any meaningful friendship. via @Darling #friendship Share on X

2. Under Promise.
As a deep feeler, I feel the urge to promise my close friends that we will talk every week, send letters in the mail, and text regularly. But, the reality is that I don’t know if I will be able to do those things and promising them such will only cause pain to my friends if I don’t follow through. It might even make them feel forgotten when they most definitely are not forgotten to me.

Instead, in seasons of change, it’s a good idea to under promise what you can offer in this next season. Be honest with yourself and with your friends. If you are taking a new job, it might be much more demanding than your current one. You will need current friends in your new community, and much of your time may need to be poured into getting to know new people, especially in the first months of change. But decide what you can promise — and stick to it. A call every other week? Put it on the calendar. A trip every year? Buy the tickets now.

We know how much our friends mean to us; often, they don’t. Tell them. #friendship Share on X

3. Say Thank You.
We know how much our friends mean to us; often, they don’t. As you prepare to leave (or watch them leave), put down in words what their relationship has meant to you. Thank them, specifically and purposefully, for how they have helped you grow, change, and love for the better.

Read two more ways to say goodbye well over at Darling Magazine, where this article originally appeared!

Still Waiting by Ann Swindell

Filed Under: Friendship, Guest Post, Life Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Taking Care of Each Other

May 15, 2015 by 1 Comment

I’m honored to be writing for (in)courage today, sharing my heart about friendship and learning to receive care from those who love us. The article starts below, but you can link straight to (in)courage here!

Our value is not found in what we do but in whom we belong to. www.annswindell.com

It had been a particularly difficult week, and after a short trip to visit my parents, I was dreading the return to “real life”—a life that I loved but one that currently felt like more than I could handle. We were trying to get our house on the market—a house we would already be losing money on—and had experienced multiple setbacks. I had been sick, the bitterly cold winter was relentless, and my daughter was having trouble sleeping. I was tired, emotionally shot, and worried about our finances with the house.

Still, I had to return to my life, difficult or not. But when I turned the key to our front door, what I found surprised me. It was cleaner than I’d left it! I opened a card on the table and discovered why: my friend Katie had cleaned, left dinner in the fridge, and stuck notes on surfaces throughout the house—notes that reminded me of my value in Christ and His love for me.

I was overwhelmed.

Because I felt—how else can I say it?—I felt taken care of. There is no other way to articulate why Katie’s actions meant so much to me. She had cleaned my house—the house I felt responsible to clean. She had provided dinner for my family—the meal I felt responsible to cook. And she had reminded me that my value was not in what I did, but in whose I was—Christ’s.

As a wife, mom, and teacher, most of my days are spent taking care of others. I rub backs, prepare meals, kiss cheeks, tie shoes, wash dishes, mentor students, write checks, grade papers and give lectures—along with a hundred other things. I can guess that you do numerous things, too. You may not be grading papers or preparing meals, but you’re probably caring for others somehow. You’re probably taking care of those around you.

I think that, as women, we are used to being the nurturers, the ones who take care of others.

But how often do we let others take care of us? How often do we ask others to take care of us?

Please click over and read the rest of the article here, at (in)courage! You can also sign up here to receive free daily encouragement from the writers of (in)courage, right in your inbox! 

 

Filed Under: About, Friendship, God, Guest Post, Life, Motherhood, Parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Gift of a Good Fight

March 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

If you know me, I don’t love conflict. But I have grown to appreciate the necessity of fighting–how it can lead to deeper intimacy in friendships, in family relationships, in marriage. My newest piece is up at Today’s Christian Woman, about this very thing.

The Gift of a Good Fight: Fighting can help our relationships, if we follow God's advice!

I was out of town when I received a voice message from my friend Gwen. I’d been at a conference all day and couldn’t be reached, so I sat in the hallway and listened to her words. She was hurt, she mentioned, by something I’d said earlier in the week, and she wanted to know my intentions behind it. Had she misunderstood me?

I sighed.

I dislike conflict—especially conflict with people I love. Three or four years ago, words like this from a friend could have sent me into a tailspin. I would have felt anxious and unsure about our relationship, questioning her love for me and our friendship’s footing.

But this time, I was sighing because she was right. I was sighing because I knew that I needed to apologize. I was sighing because, honestly, I was tired of being a sinner. I was tired of hurting the people I love the most.

I connected with Gwen, explained my intentions, and repented for where I had sinned. She was more than gracious. She was loving, and she forgave me. And I wasn’t worried about where we stood; I knew our friendship was solid.

For someone who used to avoid any form of argument as much as possible, I felt oddly buoyed by the realization that I was, in fact, getting better at this conflict thing.

The Grace of a Fighting Friend

Gwen is nothing if not honest. When we became friends, it quickly became apparent to me that she never shied away from conflict.

When our friendship grew closer, I learned she also wasn’t afraid of a fight. In fact, she welcomed it. She was never bullheaded or self-righteous, but if there was something between us that didn’t feel healthy to her, she brought it up. I initially had a difficult time reconciling Gwen’s welcoming attitude toward conflict with friendship. The two seemed to be at odds.

But Gwen’s friendship has been a grace in my life. I’ve learned that conflict, handled well, leads to intimacy. And the inverse is also true; intimacy can’t exist honestly without conflict.

What Holds Us Back from Conflict

I wish conflict didn’t exist. My preference is that relationships could roll along without any fights, arguments, or disagreements. But if we get up every morning and actually interact with other humans, we know that conflict—or at least the possibility for conflict—is everywhere.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

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