How to Find Good, Honest Friends
Growing up, my mom always told me that you’re blessed if you have one good friend. I guess I’m double blessed because I have two friends who have walked beside me through life’s unpredictable journey.
On most Wednesday nights, you’ll find us at a restaurant while our kids attend church. It’s nothing fancy, but it is a time when we can let down our walls and be ourselves fully. Between the three of us, we’ve navigated more than our fair share of heartbreak, including parents’ loss by cancer, a sibling lost to suicide, and a home reduced to ashes by fire. And now, one of us is walking through yet another dark season as her husband battles cancer.
In a world that often pressures us to say, “I’m fine,” our little circle is a sanctuary where we can come undone without shame. There, we remember that God sees us in our vulnerability.
The Strength of Shared Burdens
Some Wednesdays, we laugh until our ribs ache. Other nights, we cry, and sometimes, we even vent our frustration about the difficult circumstances. Nothing is off-limits. We don’t gloss over pain or bury our worries; instead, we share them openly, leaning on one another’s strength.
Scripture calls us to “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Sharing our struggles has a beautiful paradox—it lightens our load. In these honest moments, we find that by sharing our sorrow, we make space for grace to seep in, for peace to be restored little by little.
Joy in the Midst of Suffering
But through our friendship over the years, we’ve learned the art of “joy mining.” We’ve learned how to dig deep and sift through the ashes of our pain to find sparks of joy that refuse to be extinguished. And somehow, even as we acknowledge our suffering, we discover moments of grace and gratitude that help us see the beauty, the brokenness, and the pain.
It’s only been through the gift of friendship that I’ve understood the words of James, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3).
It sounds impossible, but joy doesn’t have to replace suffering; it can sit alongside it. The truth is in the hands of God. Even our pain can produce something beautiful.
An Invitation to Seek True Friendship
To anyone who feels alone in their struggles, I want to say this: you don’t have to face them alone. Seek out people who will sit with you in the messy parts of life—friends who won’t flinch at your tears, who will laugh and cry with you, and who will speak truth into your hardest moments.
These friendships are worth everything.
Find people who will mine for joy with you, even when life feels unbearably heavy. There, in the rawness of shared struggles and joys, you’ll find a treasure that nothing in this world can replace. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). This is the beauty of God’s design for friendship—a place where joy and sorrow meet.
Meet Lea Turner
Lea Turner is the author of The Freedom to Feel: Finding God in Grief and Trauma. Joyfully broken through three years of her family struggling with trauma and loss, including death, cancer, losing everything to a house fire, drug addiction, loss of a dream, and heart surgery, has made her a reluctant expert on grief.
Lea is a soulful listener and wisdom seeker passionate about walking with grieving people through trauma, pain, and loss. She lives in Mississippi with her husband and five kids, making her a northern girl stuck in a Southern world. Find more at leaturner.com and on Instagram.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
