“The right woman will talk to the Lord about you. The wrong woman will talk to her friends about you.”
I don’t know where that quote is from, but a friend shared it with me 12 years ago. It is still very hurtful yet promising reminder of how friendship should be.
When does the gossip and the slander and the turning away stop?
When do we collectively decide to come alongside women when the hurt/sin/trauma/disappointment is big in their lives versus creating our own narrative taken to others?
It stops with you and me.
I say no more. The enemy has done enough to take the joy from relationships that should be trusted sisterhoods. I’m done with the fear of what’s been said that I don’t know and thank God for relationships that are taken to Him not gossiped about.
At one very hard time with friendship where it was just messy all around, I started writing thoughts under the title “Mean Girl”. Journaling out what was hurtful, what I wished to see change in sisterhood, and how I myself had gotten it so wrong.
“…with someone jumping up on a pedestal, wagging down their finger at you, you can push them off and beat them up or walk on. Don’t listen to it- don’t stand underneath their opinions of you. The first place you walk to should be straight to the Lord.”
Yet, years later reading that, I still haven’t gotten the “walking on” part right. I’ve been silent. I have smiled and waved, unsure of a return gesture. I have written and deleted texts and avoided places where maybe I wouldn’t be fully accepted.
What happens for you when you say no more? You live in freedom. You get to experience joy that is only found in the Lord, not with followers and friend counts (real life and social).
What’s the ultimate gain? Your entire world of onlookers gets to see that they too can trust God with their story, because He let you shine in spite of anything- both true and untrue.
There’s a story in the Bible of a woman at the well that my small group friends discussed recently from John 4, “Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. ”The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
The next exchange was Jesus calling out how He knew that she was living with a man, unmarried, and had five husbands previously. Can you imagine the town talk about her? Yet, here was a Savior who was offering her more than water- a relationship with Him.
She didn’t run to the well in need of anything but her daily drinking water (physical) or even expect to meet Jesus there that day, yet there He was ready to meet a soul quenching thirst (spiritual). Still today that story impacts women whether they relate to being thirsty, gossip, lack of faith, or adultery and many husbands.
I hope it impacts you today in knowing that you are fully seen and fully loved. You might be approaching a well alone, but there is someone already there to meet you where you are. You might be carrying an empty jug expecting nothing more for your life but mundane tasks alone, but get filled with living water that sustains.
Now, take your jug and repeat what the woman said to others when she found freedom without fear, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (verse 29) He is just that… the Savior we celebrate the birth of this Christmas is the same Jesus who is urging you to tell your story and forget what others say, because you know Him and have joy because of it!
Gossip stops with you, but it starts a whole new story of Christ’s love.