Life is easier when you know who your enemies are. Hopefully you don’t have many, but if you have no enemies you are unusual to say the least. Inevitably, when you stand up for something important, someone will disagree. This doesn’t make them an enemy, but enemies are sometimes born in this manner. The real difficulty is when you think someone is a friend, but in reality, he/she is an enemy. Frenemy. Frenemies are kind to your face, but (perhaps unconsciously) tear at you from behind the scenes. They act as if they have your best interest, but seek more to promote themselves. They are sometimes very close to your heart. Why? Because you are willing to put up with the difficulties in order to keep the friendship, or you can’t bring yourself to dissolve the relationship. Or perhaps they are your neighbors, or the history is important to you. There are many reasons why we keep frenemies. Sometimes we do not have a choice. For example, they may be family members or marriage partners, or children.
When I was younger a friend of mine was hurt that I was dating a man whom she liked (you can tell the stage of life here). Deeply hurt. So much so that she would ignore me and refuse to speak unless there were others present. Nothing, short of breaking up the dating relationship would help the situation. The stress was so difficult that it strained the dating relationship anyway.
I don’t blame my friend. I’ve been hurt over things like this as well and it runs deep, but there is a cost to having frenemies. It takes energy, time, patience, and often courage. If you decide to keep the frenemy close to you, then it requires living with not knowing which side will show at any given time – the friend side or the enemy side. This not knowing can be challenging, and even confusing.
If YOU are the frenemy, it takes awareness, submission to God and the courage to face it and do something about it. It takes deep understanding as to why you would allow yourself to hurt a friend. What pain runs that deep? What resentment?
It is the frenemies that Jesus scolded most fiercely – those that appeared to be supportive, but who secretly worked against him. It is those that are neither hot nor cold that God spews out of his mouth. There is nothing respectable about being a frenemy. There is little that is helpful about having them close.
There is an old Gaelic blessing: “May those who love us, love us. And those who don’t turn their hearts; and if those who don’t turn their hearts, may they turn their ankles, so we’ll know them by their limping.”
May we know our frenemies by their limping!
Gwen –
Are you by chance the Gwen from LCA?! What a joy to see your comment here. The image of limping really stays with you after reading this. Wonderful.