The Friend Who Told Me The Truth
By Blane Sheffield
We were two coffees deep into a conversation that had started about work and drifted, the way honest conversations do, into something closer to the truth. He looked at me and said, 'You've been checked out of your marriage for a year, and I don't think you've noticed.' It landed like a punch, mostly because he was right.
Proverbs 27:6 says faithful are the wounds of a friend. Most men surround themselves with company that flatters rather than friends who confront, because flattery is comfortable and confrontation costs something — usually the friendship itself, or at least the illusion of it.
That diner conversation cost me a sleepless night and a hard conversation with my wife the next day. It also, honestly, saved something I did not realize was already breaking. I have thought about that table more times than I can count in the years since.
Find the friend who will tell you the truth, even when it costs him the comfortable version of your friendship. Then, when it is your turn, be that friend for someone else.
More in Personal Experiences
The Ridge At 4 A.M.
The morning I stopped asking God to fix my circumstances and started asking Him to break my pride.
Kneeling In An Empty Room
Nobody claps for the man who prays before sunrise. That is precisely why it forms him — a long look at hidden obedience and the fruit it grows in a household.
