I’ve heard it said that you are the average of your five closest friends. Interesting idea to ponder. So, who are my five closest friends? What do they have in common with me? And why have they moved into that category? 

Conversely, why have I not been invited into friendship with some people? What is it about me that some don’t want me in their inner circle of friendship?

Now I recognize that we only have capacity for so many relationships. There is an outer circle of perhaps up to 150 people we know some things about, we recognize in social settings and could perhaps enjoy dinner with every few years. This circle continues to get smaller as we enjoy deeper connections. Yet at the core, it is probably only about 5 people that we have the time and mental capacity to have extremely deep friendships with.

So, if the number is limited, who will your friends be?

In the past month, I’ve started using the phrase “foggy friends” to talk about those that I desire to have closest to me, and in reality, I believe that these are the ones that are in my “inner circle”. 

When I first told my wife about this, I got a strange look. Perhaps this is your response. In some ways, foggy may imply lack of clarity, uncertainty.

Yet for me it is quite the opposite. It is all about living on mission. To have such a sense of the future, of where you need to be heading, of God calling you to something, and yet you have very little to go on in how to get there. Yet you are still willing to move ahead the 5 feet you can see in front of you and nothing more because of the fog. You believe that beyond the fog there is that place that you will get to, maybe in a week, or a month, or a year, or perhaps not even in your lifetime. But you are still willing to go there, and you are going to do it with your friends who also believe in it. Many around may question your sanity, but you know that you only need a few foggy friends who will continue to be your encouragement and sounding board.

Now I do know that we all have certain personalities, and that some of us are more apt to live in “the stretch” of the unknown. And yet, as I’ve travelled globally and engaged with Christians around the world of all different personalities, I’ve recognized more that my culture, and let me specifically talk about the church culture in general terms, does not want to live in the fog. They want plans and budgets and things all lined up – wait until the fog lifts – before moving forward, small and big things.

Yet if we are called to live by faith, we need to get used to the fog. 

Now I can look out and wonder why others aren’t living this way, but in reality I can do nothing about that. What I can do is choose how I am going to live.

So if I am the average of my 5 closest friends, and if I want to live by faith, not knowing fully how to get where I believe I’m called to go, then I want to make sure that I have foggy friends to do life with. How about you?

For the kingdom.

Yesterday we had an extended family gathering for Christmas 2023. The family has expanded over the years, with our parents having 4 children, their 4 children had 9 children, and the 9 now have children. It was good to be together.

However, the gatherings have taken a turn this past year with my father having passed away in February and the increasing depth of my mother’s Alzheimer’s taking effect throughout the year.

Fortunately, we were able to bring my mother into the gathering where we sang Christmas songs and allowed her to see what was happening with the kids. At times she appeared to understand, even smiling, and at times she appeared confused. Her speech is slurred so conversations are mostly not possible.

It was difficult to see her in this state as she was always at the centre of these gatherings, actively participating in playing games, long conversations and bringing her amazing Christmans baking that we all appreciated.

The emotions we feel are real. We feel bad for our mother / grandmother, and wonder what she is experiencing. We wonder how we are to respond. We talk about her “quality of life” and perhaps (just me thinking out loud) attempt to make ourselves feel better by how we talk about the care she is receiving at the long-term care home she resides in. (In reality, she had always asked that this would be the place that she would live when she got older.)

Yet for me the question always is the same – how to connect this with discipleship, because discipleship is always about the day to day living, and it must encompass all aspects, the good and the bad. 

In a previous blog a few years ago, I talked about attending funerals as a piece of our discipleship. To be able to reflect on the life of the person while at the same time reflecting on your own life. To recognize that this person no longer has life to live here on earth and that one day this will be my reality. 

So as I engage with my mother, I can feel the pain in myself as I watch her become less and less of who I knew her to be, and also lean in to love her just the way she is. I can mourn the fact that life has a way of degrading all of us over time, and be reminded that this was never how God intended things to be and that Jesus chose to enter into our world and experience it alongside us. 

I can, and in fact I must, not shy away from these encounters with my mother or in watching the family experience the pain, but lean in close, to hug her, kiss her, talk to her, look her in the eyes and let the Holy Spirit shape my heart and mind. To know that these encounters are moulding me. Suffering, the degrading of our minds and bodies, is something that we will all experience. That the solutions that “the world” may suggest are most likely not ones that God would have for us. That “quality of life” conversations can be a distraction from what God wants to do in us.

These are discipleship moments, in the same way reading scripture, praying, solitude and serving are. And if I allow them and give space for the Holy Spirit to speak, then I can experience the amazing tension of pain and beauty in my discipleship journey.

For the kingdom.