I recently connected with a friend I haven’t gotten to chat with in years. We spoke on the phone for two hours, laughing, sharing, and catching up on the news we’ve missed. I do believe I will never forget this phone call. As we were wrapping things up, she said, “Well, it’s been real.” I responded, “There has never been a conversation more real than this one!” We cracked up again.
As I ponder that phone call, real absolutely rings true. We held nothing back. Every struggle or heartache with its raw emotions was on the table. We sympathized in these things and rejoiced in the triumphs of life as well. However, we are living in completely different spaces spiritually. We kept this real too, discussing our faith with total honesty. I asked her if she’s attending church. “Not at all.” I asked her if she is pursuing her relationship with the Lord. “Not at all.” Again, we giggled over the frankness of our conversation. I shared, “Usually people try to impress me with their spiritual know-how, but your honesty is wonderfully refreshing.” She remarked that she has nothing to prove and is assured of my love regardless of her station.
After all these years, we still have much in common: our humor, our love of the arts, motherhood, and of course, our past spent together as young women trying to figure out early adulthood. And here we are today, middle-aged with shifting hormones, separated by thousands of miles and millions of moments lived without each other. We look in the mirror and see the same 19-year-old spitfires we once were, but now our flames are fueled by different sources.
My friend has survived years of great suffering relationally, emotionally, and physically, and it has landed her in a place of self-sufficiency. I write these words with confidence, knowing that if she reads them, she will agree with my assessment. I have not endured the same kind of suffering, though life has not always been kind to me either. Unlike my friend, I find myself in this season of life more keenly aware than ever that there is nothing sufficient about me. I pled with her (because we were keeping it real) to remember there is only One who is sufficient to meet her needs. In a world that has failed her, Christ is her expectations met. Apart from Him, she can do nothing of eternal worth. And without Him, her genuine and lasting peace isn’t possible. “My grace is sufficient for you” is not some cliché Jesus quote. His grace is what will sustain her, shape her, hold her, and it is what will one day bring her home to Him.
In our efforts to keep it real, let us never forsake the only real truth there is: Jesus is Lord. He is in charge, sovereign over the details of our lives, both the sufferings and the triumphs. He alone is the all-sufficient One.
After Paul quotes Jesus’s words, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness,” he explains why he lays down any attempts of self-sufficiency: “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Why endlessly strive for a fallible strength when we can rest in an infallible strength? The Lord of all creation dwells in His own and His strength is perfect.
Paul also states, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). Undoubtedly, it is more difficult for the self-made woman to find her confidence and security in Christ, but the work was begun years ago in my friend, and He promises to complete it. And when He does, she will truly know what is real.
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