Grow up!

Countless studies have demonstrated the health benefits of friendships, including lowered blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. In fact, one study found that people with the most friends had a 60% reduced risk of death than those with no or few friends.

The benefits of friendship are even more marked in women. UCLA research studies have found that friendships among women can counteract the kind of debilitating stress that many females experience on a daily basis.

The Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found an inverse relationship between the number of friendships women had, and the likelihood of developing physical impairments with age. Women were more likely to be leading a "joyful life" with an increased number of friendships. Harvard researchers concluded that, in women, the lack of close friends was as detrimental to health as smoking or carrying extra weight.

If friendships are supposedly beneficial, why are they so difficult? For girls in the 20- to 30- year old bracket, relationships seem particularly frustrating, often fraught with misunderstanding, immaturity, comparison, hurt feelings, and a lack of "realness". The more girls I talk with, the more I realize this is the reality of our relationships. For the Christian who has been "made alive by righteousness" (Rom. 8:10) why do our relationships still bear rotten fruit?

We are sinful beings and our relationships are tainted by our sin. Every wrong action, reaction, word, idea, emotion, and attitude is from the flesh. Only the Holy Spirit can bridle our sinful flesh. "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." (Gal. 5:16)

The sad reality of broken, dysfunctional, or childish relationships is not God's will for Christians. Au contraire, He wants us to relate to one another in mature, loving ways that build one another up and bring Him honor. As is written in John: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) Perhaps we need to GROW UP.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (1 Cor. 13:11)

...Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
(Ephesians 4:15-16)

BIG GIRLS

• Take responsibility
• Are selfless
• See difficulties as a challenge!
• Free of proving themselves
• Say "I can"
• Communicate: say what they think and mean
• Rest in God's sovereignty
• Make decisions and then live with the consequences
• Compliment others
• Stable: same today, tomorrow, and the next day
• Respond: thoughtfully consider how to answer
• Appropriate: understand the time and place
• Face the problem or situation
• Know the Word and that it is what stabilizes!

little girls

• Blame others
• Are selfish
• Say life is unfair
• In bondage
• Afraid to get out of comfort zone
• Say "I can't"
• Manipulate
• Are always victims
• Can't decide for fear of making the wrong decision
• Criticize others
• Unstable
• React
• Inappropriate: oblivious to everyone but themselves
• Avoid
• Compare themselves
• All characteristics are based on fear

Source: http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/gender/tendfend.html