Earlier today, I was sitting in my office reflecting on the importance of friendships and how I truly do have good friends in my life. A handful of objects sit just within my peripheral vision, but they suddenly caught my eye. Nothing profound or intentionally arranged. Just random items sitting on the upper portion of my desk.
As I looked at them, I began to realize each one was connected to a friendship. I might have stretched to apply that analogy to a couple things, but what good is an object lesson if all the objects don’t have some kind of meaning.
Fast-food toys… Are they erasers or just little fidget toys? I don’t really know, but they might be the most random things in my entire office. They were a joke a friend once played on me, something silly she hid in my office when I wasn’t there. I was confused when I first found them, but they remain right there on my desk to remind me to have fun. Smile and laugh and don’t take everything so seriously. Friendship isn’t always grand gestures. Sometimes it’s the simple joy of knowing someone sees you, knows you, and is willing to be playful when life gets heavy.
Next to them sat a pair of rechargeable batteries. They weren’t meant to be symbolic, but today they were. I’ve been running on fumes a lot lately without even fully understanding why. Those batteries reminded me that good friends step in when your reserves hit zero. They don’t replace your strength, but they come alongside you long enough to help you catch your breath. Sometimes that looks like prayer or a check-in. Sometimes it’s just someone reminding you that you’re not crazy, not alone, and not beyond hope. I look forward to every Friday because I get to spend the evening with some of my closest friends. I might even look forward to Wednesday afternoons even more, and it’s just something as simple as meeting my best friend at Costco to kill time for an hour or so.
A couple of small, 3D-printed plastic pieces were sitting there too. Just small parts a friend made for me to fix a tripod issue I was having. No fanfare, no big production, just a simple act of help. Friendship isn’t measured by what someone can do for you. Sometimes a simple willingness to enter someone else’s need, whether that need is big, small, or somewhere in between is all you need to recognize a true friend.
Behind all of this was one of my studio speakers. It’s so much bigger than the other things that caught my eye that I almost missed it. We all listen to speakers and know they produce sound. But did you know that speakers can also receive audio signals rather than transmit them? And that’s what real friends do too. They hear the hurt, the frustration, the and the confusion with grace. But they also speak truth in love. True friends encourage, but they also correct. They comfort, but they don’t enable destruction. In the moments when the volume of my internal noise gets too loud, my friends have been a steadying voice… sometimes gentle, sometimes direct, but always rooted in love.
And then there was the small vial of anointing oil. That one hit the deepest. Scripture calls us to go to the elders when we are sick for prayer and anointing. Those men are my brothers, my partners in shepherding, and also my friends. I trust them with my weaknesses. I trust them with the parts of me that feel less put-together. That little vial also reminded me of the balm of Gilead and the promise that God restores hope and heals what breaks. He brings reconciliation, and He often does it through the hands and voices of faithful friends who lead us back to Him when our hearts feel unanchored.
These last few months have forced me to confront my own limits. My patience has been thin at times and my emotions have been unpredictable. The state of my body has felt off and my sleep has been inconsistent. I’ve had moments where I’ve acted out of exhaustion rather than wisdom, and moments when I’ve been ashamed of how close to the edge I was from acting out of anger and frustration.
But in all of that, I have been surrounded by people who care enough to check in, pray, speak life, ask hard questions, and remind me that struggle isn’t failure. It’s part of being human in a broken world.
I’m learning, maybe more publicly than I intended, that lament has a place in the Christian life. Moses lamented. David lamented. Jeremiah lamented. Even the psalms of the sons of Korah carry the tension of grief and hope. Lament isn’t a lack of faith; it’s often the doorway back to deeper faith. It’s the honest cry that pushes us toward the God who heals.
And in the middle of lament, God uses friends, mentors, brothers, and sisters to steady us. To speak truth over us and remind us who we are and who we belong to. They recharge our batteries when we have nothing left to give and come alongside to help fix what’s broken. Even if it’s just a piece of a tripod… or a piece of a heart.
Sitting there in my office, surrounded by a handful of ordinary objects, I was reminded of something profoundly simple:
We were never meant to do life alone. We are better together. Especially in the seasons when we feel like we’re barely holding on.
If you’ve been in a similar place, let me encourage you: reach out to someone. Be honest and open and let someone reach out to you. Let people pray. Don’t be afraid to let them speak truth. Let them carry a corner of your burden for a while.
It’s not weakness. It’s how God designed us. For community.
And if it’s been raining on you lately, may God send someone to hold an umbrella over you, just long enough for the clouds to break.