I’ll never forget the first (and thankfully only time) my youngest needed his EpiPen. These needles are created to pierce through tough jeans, and watching it stab into his leg and hearing his shriek when he was already experiencing so much terror was a needle to my own heart. But I knew it was necessary—it was life or death.
So I tell my kids, now that they are old enough to understand, sometimes we have to trust those who cause us pain, knowing the pain they cause is meant for our wellness and healing. Sometimes we have to let them poke and prod at our wounds to make them better and other times they need to create a new wound so that we don’t become more sick. It hurts to pluck a thorn from my son’s hand, but he will be in more pain if I don’t.
It’s not just doctors and medical professionals who cause us necessary pain. Sometimes, it’s friends too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay on friendship that it is “better to be a nettle in the side of your friend, than his echo.”[1] Scripture similarly says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27.6 NASB). I have three friends who are regularly a nettle in my side—they tell me when I am wrong, when I have sinned, and when my thinking is illogical and erroneous. At times, they even make me cry and clench my fists.
But even as their words cause a flurry of emotions inside me, I am grateful, because I know such courageous friends are few and far in between. I know such overflowing love that will be honest even when it hurts me is not a common trait found among friends. Most friends are yes men and cheerleaders to our worst ideas and missteps because they don’t want to hurt our feelings or cause any awkward tension. Even more, they don’t want to risk losing the friendship.
True friends, however, are first their own person. “There must be very two before there can be very one . . . We must be our own before we can be another’s,” Emerson wrote.[2] By first being their own person, my friends are people who pursue after what is right and true, and they will continue to do so even in our friendship. They aren’t relying on me to find their happiness and identity—those already exist within that friend, which means it’s okay if they upset me with painful truths. They don’t need my acceptance to be happy.
These three friends have become the threefold cord that is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4.12). Because of their (at times) brutal honesty, I have grown stronger. I see my logical fallacies more quickly, I catch the temptation before it is born into sin. But it is only because of how they have faithfully wounded me again and again when my pride or past has left me blind.
Emerson also said, “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.”[3] We might think that being in such honest company would make us want to hide our shortcomings and thoughts, keeping them close to our chests. Yet a much different response is formed—knowing this friend will be nothing but honest with us, we have no fear that the words they bring will be anything but what is true and good. We know there’s no need to dress up before them; we can lay ourselves bare so that they may give us the right answer we truly seek. Because who wants to be led astray? Who wants someone to withhold necessary knowledge from us?
I can think aloud before these three friends because I know they will not allow me to be foolish. That is a much better feeling than knowing I will be cheered on even as I say the most profoundly stupid words or face the consequences of a poor decision made. Because even if these friends prove me to be unwise as I lay my naked heart before them, I know they will still love me. If they didn’t love me, they would not so bravely share the truth.
A true friend cares about truth and will pursue that truth with you. C. S. Lewis said that in friendship, “Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?—or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’”[4] True friends care so much about the truth even when it means carefully plucking splinters from your eyes first (Matthew 7.3–5).
A type of “friend” does exist that thinks they are capable of plucking splinters from our eyes, and they often try, but they bumble about and hurt us more because they have far too large of a log in their eye to see straight. They aren’t able to execute the kind of precise and tender care required for removing splinters from someone’s eyes. These “friends” will often call you out for actions that aren’t sins. They will point out splinters in your eyes just for the sake of tearing you down to make themselves feel better. These are not wounds that should be trusted or praised.
The kind of friend like my three can be trusted to remove our splinters because we know that in their pursuit of truth they have already taken the log out of their own eye. We can trust the wounds they make, even when they cause our eyes to sting with tears because they do so in order to make our eyes as clear as theirs. They never glory in pointing out our sins; they come to heal it.
In this way, they mirror Christ to us.
Just as Christ died that we may be made holy, so they have died to their need to be liked (or avoid awkward conversations). Just as Christ promises to sanctify us, even when it requires passing through fire (1 Peter 1.6–7), so our true friends promise to sharpen us as iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27.17).
I can’t help but think of Aslan changing Eustace Scrubb from a dragon back into a boy. When Eustace is unable to tear off the dragon scales, Aslan says that he must help him. Eustace was afraid of the claws but even more afraid of remaining as a dragon, so he rolled over and let Aslan do his work. Eustace said, “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.”[5]
The sanctifying work of Christ in us and the faithful wounds of a friend both hurt, so that we think they have pierced our very hearts. But even in the pain we can glory, knowing the thick dragon skin, the wrecked flesh of our old selves, is being torn away and we are being made new.
One time, I overheard a conversation where one of my three friends gave counsel to someone else. Afterwards, I chuckled and threw my hands up in the air. “You were so much easier on them than you would have been with me. You never hold back like that with me. Why? Why are you so much harder on me?” The friend looked at me and said, “Because I love you more.”
These three friends have caused me to cry tears of anger at their words, tears of embarrassment at my foolishness, but also tears of overwhelm at their steadfast love for me. They have spoken truth to me in the midst of great sin and great folly, and their love has never waned. I hope to be as great a friend for them as they have been for me.
[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays, Project Gutenberg eBook, Edna H. L. Turpin, ed. (2005); from Merrill’s English Texts (New York, 1907); https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#FRIENDSHIP
[2] Emerson, “Friendship.”
[3] Emerson, “Friendship.”
[4] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1940; repr., HarperCollins, 2017), 786.
[5] C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; repr., HarperCollins 2004), 474–475.
The featured image is courtesy of Amelia Freidline and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Lara d’Entremont is a mother and author. She is the author of A Mother Held: Essays on Motherhood and Anxiety. Lara writes stories for the young and old alike, always striving to share the light of hope in the darkest of places—whether it be essays for a new mom through postpartum depression or a novel for a child wondering if their art matters. She is a member of The Maker’s Project, and her work has appeared in Christianity Today, The Rabbit Room, Verily, and others.
You can learn more about her work at laradentremont.com.
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