A year ago, I met a friend for coffee at her home. This gal is super crazy about Jesus. It’s so awesome. When I’m with her, I always walk away closer to Christ than I was before our time together. So it was with this meeting. As I drove the 45-minute trip home, it saddened me to think it would probably be another year or two before we saw each other. Work obligations, busy schedules, and family commitments keep us from being intentional with our time and putting a meet-up date on the calendar.

What’s crazy, is that I know many Godly women like her and want to spend time with them. I’m just not committed to do so.

Maybe like me, you too have these folks in your life—people who want God more than they want their own happiness, and they want this for you as well. So they say things to you that mess you up—in a good way—and make you better. These gals challenge my self-centered thinking and ask me to consider how I might change my attitude to look more like Jesus.

I’m friends with these women on social media, they are in my contacts on my phone, but I rarely see them. Texting isn’t enough. Because I’ve learned when we meet face to face, our relationships deepen with each other and with Jesus, much more so than typing words on a device. After coffee that morning, I knew if I wanted more of what I experienced with her and women like her, I needed to do something about it.

My solution

The chaos of life wouldn’t allow me to meet with these friends separately on a regular basis. But what if we met together? Most of these ladies live within driving distance to my house. So maybe they might consider meeting once a month to talk about what God’s doing, where He’s at work, and what He wants to do through us. I messaged them and they said, “Yes!”

Our first meeting

We decided to meet at my house after we dropped our kids off at school. I provided a light spread of snacks and told them to help themselves to the Keurig. We moved into the living room and sat down. I shared how I knew each woman and then asked them to talk about what’s going on in their lives.

The first woman shared a little bit about herself, her family struggles, work, etc. And then her eyes filled with tears. She opened up her heart about how she struggled with uneasy feelings that surrounded her new pregnancy. My heart ached for my friend while she cried. I looked around the room to see the rest of the women, who had only known her ten minutes, nod their heads and listen intently—some with heads cocked to the side, others with creased brows—all of us with faces of committed understanding, showing her she was in a safe place to express the deep recesses of her true self.

Because of her vulnerability, other women followed with their own struggle stories and joyous ones too. Two hours passed by in what felt like minutes.

After we prayed together, one of the women said, “Can we pull out our phones and make sure we have this meeting on our calendars each month? I don’t want to miss the next one.” So we did. And we left my house chiseled, sharpened, and more confident to walk back into our corner of the world, knowing we weren’t alone in it. And since we were created by God for community—community with Him and with others—we brought fame to God’s name.

Each month and meeting since has been filled with powerful, deep conversation, accountability, questions about God, Scripture reading and wrestling, tears of frustration and sadness, and lots of laughter too.

We don’t meet for three more weeks, and I’m counting the days.

Getting creative on getting together

How about you? Do you desire, as I do, to spend time with friends who love and challenge you, but struggle getting together with them? This takes intentionality and it takes time, which none of us have an excess of. But how could you get creative and gather all the folks you want to talk with into one place, instead of trying to meet separately or throwing in the towel because there’s no way that will happen?

A meeting could happen at someone’s home, Starbucks, on a walk together, or on a video conference like, “Zoom”. If there’s no wiggle room in your schedule, I use a great app called, “Voxer”. “Voxer” is a walkie-talkie type app that allows people to send voice messages to friends. The recipient listens and responds at their convenience. I use this with a couple out-of-town friends and it’s an amazing way to stay in touch and talk. All without scheduling a meeting.

God created us to do life together, to spend time with one another, to grab the arm of someone who’s down, lift them up, and allow them to do the same for us. Our friends can point out the times we’ve taken the mic from God and have decided to run our own show. But we must be intentional to keep our relationships connected if we want to see this happen.

However it works for you, may we be people who refuse to allow the busyness of our lives to keep us from spending time together, because we make each other better.

May we be intentional and consistent, brave and vulnerable. And may our dedication to, “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” and our refusal “to give up meeting together” (Hebrews 10:24-25) make God famous.

Do you have any creative ways you make time for friendship? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!