Having a lost and lonely day...

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[sistanchrist]

So, I am curious as after a ruff couple of weeks and looking up and around me, noticing a severe lack of support and friendships, how are other people handling the relational shortage that leaving GC has produced?  I know that until two years ago my whole relational network and all of my friendships were consumed in GC.  Heck, my whole life was consumed by my GC church.  You could have painted me as a GC poster child, at every meeting, doing all of the things prescribed for me to do, and being of single focus for "my women" in my small group.  When I woke up to what was going on and left my GC church, I left all of those relationships.  There are only two or three people who will still speak to me who are still in that church, one only because we share classes together, another is my best friend though that relationship is turbulent as anything even loosely relating to anything from the time I was at GC or GC ideas is sure to start fireworks between us.  I find myself, even though I love my new church and the people there, being unable to form friendships because of the lack of trust that this has created.  How have other people here a) gotten past the loss of friends, relationships, supports and b) gotten past the fear of relationships especially with other believers?

[jehu]

I highly recommend beer and hotwings.  Hmm what else?  How about this idea... be salty?  Social immersion seems like a fun notion to me as well.  It's okay not to trust people.  Sometimes they really are out to get you  But part of being well-rounded is giving people the occasional opportunity to earn trust.  I dare not presume too much about your situation.  Myself I'm trying to back away from sorting people out as saved and unsaved, because people in my life who were judged and labelled as unsaved became "churched" and other people who were classified as "saved" have disappointed me.  People come together in whatever ways that they do, and they make mistakes, and sometimes that is a fine thing.  I retain the right to make a mistake or two socially.  It is certain and expected, and usually there really are no correct answers.

[Growing Again]

I can relate. Church was our social network. When we left, we still had a select few we remained friends with. My best friend left before we did so we were still friends and my husband stayed friends with a few guy friends. My friend moved an hour away shortly after we left so I essentally had no one close to do stuff with. I prayed for God to bring new friendships into my life and I started joining groups--mostly with my kids. I met another mom at my sons preschool who wanted to start a play group for the kids. We became friends and turns out she's a Christian! And her church didn't have all the little 'rules' like how to raise the kids, who to hang around with, and the pressure to home school. Refreshing! She got me involved in the MOPS group at her church so I met more people. Her church was going through a leadership change so I shyed away from going to church there but I did become involved in the womens groups and some kid groups. This was while I wasn't going to church so it was great. I am a scrapbooker so I got involved in a local scrapbooking group and met some other people--some Christan, some not. This was a no-no at my old GC* church--being friends with non-believers that I'm not witnessing to.
I actually feel very good about the friends I have now and would like to have some couple friends but maybe someday. I haven't made any friends at church yet and I'm not ready to join a small group or serve just yet. I'm still waiting for my husband to join me there or find a good church we can both go to.

[Lynn]

For me, for what ever reason, there are now few that I would call a friend.  I am probably more reserved now than most and I'm ok with that.  My thought is perhaps I used to use the word "friend" too loosely because true friends wouldn't behave in the way they did.  I feel that I was only a tool to be used and when I no longer was willing to be used... that was that... and I was no longer worthy to be friend to them.  I have to say it hurt quite a bit.  Well, 2 of my kids are home... time to be a parent... Lynn  

[puff of purple smoke]

For me, for what ever reason, there are now few that I would call a friend.  I am probably more reserved now than most and I'm ok with that.  My thought is perhaps I used to use the word "friend" too loosely because true friends wouldn't behave in the way they did.  I feel that I was only a tool to be used and when I no longer was willing to be used... that was that... and I was no longer worthy to be friend to them.  I have to say it hurt quite a bit.  Well, 2 of my kids are home... time to be a parent... Lynn  

I think this is a great point, and something which can be hard but necessary to (eventually) accept. True, deep, meaningful friendships do not end on a whim. Acquaintances can, but friendships (that are defined as both parties honestly valuing each other) do not simply end without great detriment to both people. If you had friends at GC who simply stopped contacting you once you left and don't seem to care (as happened to me) they probably didn't value you as much as you might have thought they did. It was hard at first for me to come to grips with that, but once I did it was easier to accept the "loss." True friends will not do that to you. Out of the dozens and dozens of "friends" I had while in GC, only a couple of them seemed to value maintaining a relationship with me after I left. I can choose to deal with this in two ways: I can be angry at the dozens who no longer seem to care for me, or I can be grateful that a rocky point in life has helped me identify the true friends from the fair weather ones.

Now, to respond to sista's original post, about trust, and moving on. What I think has helped me is building/reenforcing my relationships outside of my new church before I try to build any inside of it. This is crucial, I think. At GC I let the small group and church friends become my friend group. They were everything to me, my life revolved around them. They really encouraged this too, with the constant activities and "spiritual family" analogies, but in the end I found myself completely dependent on them for so many things, to the point that it became unhealthy.

No where in the bible does God instruct us to only associate with "church folk," or that the people in the church are there to meet all of our (human) social and emotional needs. It is my belief that we need to diversify our social network, in the much the same way investors diversify their portfolios. Investors do this so that if one area of the market crashes, other areas of it will average out the overall portfolio and keep them in the black. Build friends with people outside of the church before you start trying to rebuild a church fellowship life. Friends with no "end goal" or purpose beyond the enjoyment of each other's company as human beings are who I would focus on. People you've known forever, childhood friends, maybe siblings, the kind of people who have always been there for you. When you no longer /need/ a small group or church friends to fulfill your emotional and social needs, you will be better able to start relationships within your new church. As long as you are not relying on the new church to meet all the (human) social/emotional needs in your life, you will be less afraid of losing them, and more able to open yourself up to them. Beyond that, your perspective on life will be so much bigger when your social network isn't entirely.. uh.. "inbred."

One last thing. I think it's important to reach a point when you say, "I accept the possibility of being hurt again." While you can minimize the risk by not putting all of your eggs in one basket emotionally, every meaningful relationship has an element of risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I started attending a new small group at my new church, this January. I almost didn't go because of the same reasons you mentioned, but I really just forced myself. And when I got there I was surprised at how much easier it was than I thought. Oh, and make sure it's a church that values the priesthood of the believer! At the new small group I'm attending they actually asked us right off the bat, "If anyone here would like to teach one of these meetings let us know" and that just blew me away. There was no spiritual hierarchy in place, or set of hoops you had to jump through to prove you were "leadership material." They recognized that we were all disciples of Christ and that the leadership didn't have the monopoly on "hearing from God." I've said before and I'll say it again, there ARE plenty of healthy churches out there. I've attended several in my life. Don't give up on all church just because of GC.

[jehu]

Yes, yes, and yes (or the optionally less directive problem-solver and more supportive reassuring response: Everything is going to be okay)

 

[Daisy]

I almost cried just reading these posts.  They are all true and good ways to cope with the loss.  A perspective change helped me to seperate past from future.

I believe that true friendships can live for a while, then die (though this makes them no less a friendship).  I believe this is what happened to me.  Though I still look upon these members of my past quite fondly, one of my closest GC friends put it best in a letter about why we could not be functional friends any longer:  'You have changed Daisy, and I don't know you anymore.'  She was right, I had changed because I was living differently than GC would have allowed.  I chose to travel (without a GC escort or church within the country I travelled to) and would have been away from my GC family for more than eight weeks. (Before I left my GC church my desire had been to study aboard for one semester, however counsel solidly refuted the idea because I would be away from them for too long.)  My friend has changed her goals in life in order to fulfill her GC given role, while I refuse to live by it.  Neither of us were who we had been when we were so close, and who we are now disallows the friendship we both had valued so dearly.  

This was a woman I lived with for years and admired on a spiritual level.  I mourned for the end of the friendship.  As we changed, what we had left and the friendship withered away even before the email which contained the quote above.  The season for that friendship ended too quickly for me, but for everything there is a season.

I pray to you good healing (which may include tears) and a good start to some new friendships for who you are today.