How to Cultivate Friendships with Chrystal Evans Hurst

Hello there. My name is Chrystal Hurst, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Coffee with Chrystal. This year, 2024, we are releasing one, count them, one, count them, uno, solamente uno podcast a week. Last year was a race to the finish line, and we were releasing two a week. So this year in 2024, once a week, you're going to get either me or you're going to get Chrystal and a guest, a sister or a brother that I'm welcoming into the sister circle area to talk about all things real good and authentic. This time, y'all, I'm not gonna bring a friend into the inner circle, into the sister circle, into the circle of all things we talk about. I am going to talk about friends and connectivity. Here's what I need you to know. I recently, um, cuz when God is trying to tell me something, he repeats himself. We had what we call in our membership, the inner circle, we had a Goal Getters Consulting Hour, and that's where people have access to Q&A me, ping me, ask me questions. And I got a question about friendships. And then after that, after that, it became clear that we needed to talk about friendships some more. So then we had what we call a sister session. And that's where it's basically like, ooh, therapy for friends, where we do a live Q&A with a guest. And it became clear then that it was something that we needed to talk about. And then the guest told me that the CDC has actually proclaimed a pandemic of sorts for loneliness, and that loneliness can be worse for you than smoking, worse for your health than smoking. So we have all this connectivity, y'all. We have all this social media, we have all this YouTube, we have all this Instagram, we have all this TikTok, we have all of these ways to connect digitally. We have been on Zoom for our whole lives. That's how it feels like. And people feel more alone than ever, and we're trying to figure out how to get friends, how to keep friends, or when is it time for the friendship to be over. And so today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that, and I want to trace through a couple things that we've been able to dive deep into in our membership. But I wanted to bring this topic up to the surface and talk to you about it because I really believe if this, if loneliness, if a lack of connectivity is such a widespread problem, then I think we can all benefit by talking about how to cultivate your circles and how to know when it's time for a circle to be over. The question, this all got kicked off because Laura in our membership asked me, about knowing when a season of friendship was over. My answer to her, and y'all, I transcribed it a little bit because I was like, I wanna know what I said because sometimes I can't remember what I said. Sometimes, you know, it's coming to an end because you and that friend are on different trajectories. And sometimes you think a friendship is ending and then it bounces back. It comes back because you just needed to give that friendship some time to flex. In life. Sometimes we didn't know in high school that we were actually going to be best friends with that person in college. Or maybe we didn't know when we graduated that we'd find ourselves going to the same church later in life. Or sometimes we didn't know that we thought we'd be friends forever, but we got married and they didn't. And so for a little bit, we had a different experience in life. But then later in life, after we got a chance to reconnect, Then we found each other again. And sometimes we just have to be open to having interruptions of friendships throughout life seasons. Here's what I wrote. Here's what I said that is now written down for me to read to you. I think the main thing is that, you know, you have the freedom to ebb and flow with friendship, that you have the freedom to be intentional with friendship. You get to say, listen, We're going to be friends. You also get to say, listen, I love you. I will always love you. I'm so sorry I haven't been a good friend, or I need to let you know that I've really been hurt because you haven't been the kind of friend that I believe that I need, but I will always love you. And I know that sometimes life will carry us apart. I said this because my good friend and I, Michelle, who literally at this moment is parked outside of my house right now in her van. Because she lives in an RV and sometimes she comes and parks at my house. And in this season of life, this is what happens. She comes and she parks at my house and she just walks in and we talk and then she walks back into her van and makes her dinner and goes to sleep. But there was a season in our 20s where I, as a single parent, and then I got married and then in my early 30s, we had, we had some hard conversations. And she said she was really hurt sometimes by the fact that she felt in our friendship that she was on the fringes. Of my life. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I just have small children and it's not you, it's me. And we had those hard conversations. We also looked at each other and said, we decided to be intentional about our friendship. And decades later, it's paying dividends. But that doesn't mean that we didn't have ebbs and flows or that we didn't have to keep coming back. Doesn't mean that there weren't tears cried. It doesn't mean that there weren't times where I really wanted Michelle to listen and she was busy doing other things or traveling to places I couldn't go to or where she really wanted my undivided attention, but I I had two toddlers and I was 8 months pregnant and I couldn't give it to her. It doesn't mean that there weren't ins and outs. I'll tell you what it does mean. It does mean that we had to have hard conversations. In any good relationship, this could be marriage, this could be friend girls, even friend boys if they're platonic, ebbs and flows are a whole thing. And there is a level of communication that you have to be willing to have in order to fight for or maintain those friendships that would be unnecessarily lost due to the ebb and the flow of life. You have to be willing to take chances. You have to be willing to be vulnerable. You have to be willing to say the hard thing, do the hard thing, be the bigger person, acknowledge that you're lonely. And I know that sometimes that may not be reciprocated. And sometimes you need to know, and this is another thing that I said in my response, you can know when it's okay to release someone and love them from a distance. You can say there's someone I'm loving right now for a— from a distance. Send them a text when it's their birthday that you want to know that that person thinks they're loved. You don't have to let somebody burn you twice if it's not a healthy relationship. It doesn't mean you're not forgiving. It also means that you may have learned your lesson. These are these ebbs and flows. You got to ask yourself, is this an investment that is paying dividends in my life or theirs? So the specifics are really some things that you have to work out, but I do want you to hear me when I say this. You gotta work it out because relationships are what makes the world go round. So here's what I want to talk about today so that before we ever get to the ebb and the flow, you know what is your responsibility to develop relationships in your life. Okay. How do you cultivate friendships that you desire? I have a few ways that I want to teach you if you don't already know how to cultivate your circle. We are always communicating with you, even though we have a membership for the Inner Circle, how you can cultivate your circle, whether that's a virtual circle, even better if it's in real life. We currently right now in the Inner Circle produce a downloadable guide so that the girls can go gather their girls and connect over a great recipe, great questions, and great podcast. You can do the same thing if you actually go to any podcast that I do on my website. For any podcast, there are always questions. Find a podcast that you love, gather some girls for coffee on a Saturday morning, give them the questions and talk it out. So we're giving you tools, either the light way, or if you're in the membership, in a deep way for you to cultivate relationships. But here's what you need to understand. You have to take responsibility for the cultivation process. If you're lonely, don't tell me you're lonely. If you're not willing to reach out, don't tell me you're lonely. If you're not willing to take the risk. Don't tell me you're lonely if you're not asking the question, how can I be the builder of a bridge? Sometimes it takes you being the first one, but I do want you to number one, choose wisely who you select or want to call as a good friend. We throw around this term of friendship so very loosely, but it's an agreement. Call someone a friend who is also like you, willing to put in some relational equity. They're willing to put in the time to talk. They're willing to put in the time to meet. They're willing to have Beyond, as our guest in one of our sister sessions said, beyond a hey girl conversation. And it's okay if you state your intentions. Listen, my husband told me when we were dating, it didn't take too long before he said to me, listen, I don't want to waste your time. I'm looking for a wife. And I was like, what does that— it's a little off-put by that, but I was glad that I knew his intentions. You don't want to scare anybody away, you know, take your time, just do some fun things. But it's okay for you to say, listen, I really want the friendships and relationships in my life to not be surface level. And I really want to be intentional about connecting. And so I don't want to scare you away. I don't want to seem like too much, but I don't just want to see you and wave in the breezeway at church. Like, are you really wanting to develop connectivity? It could be a small group. It could be just 2 or 3. And here's how I want to do that. You know, I want to talk about what the Lord is doing in my life. I want to pray together. I want to get those questions off of Chrystal Hurst's website and let's talk about it. Let's deal with some things because I want to grow and I want my friendships to be iron sharpen iron conversations. You can say that and be intentional. Proverbs 13:20 says, "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm." Friendships are give and take, and it is intentionally walking with people who you can add to their life and they can add to yours. You may have to be the leader in the development of friendship. So when you choose wisely who you call friend, choosing that friend, investing in that friendship, building that friendship may require you to lead it. And for you to be the defining person who says what the friendship is all about. You may have to show up for your friends in ways that you want them to show up for you. Be the kind of friend you you want. Number 3, you need to define the relationship. And it's okay, you don't have to be scary and you don't have to be too much, but if you're looking up for a friendship where you can pray with them and talk about deep spiritual things, if you're looking for a friendship where they have permission to hold your feet to the fire and you have permission to hold their feet to the fire about things that are going to help them grow closer to the Lord, say that. If you are wanting a friendship just for somebody to meet you for dinner on a whim or do fun things around town in Dallas, Say that, but accept that the friendship can only be what you are pouring into it and how you define it. If you are upset with other people because they're not the kind of friends that you want, what if they don't even know what you want? You know what I'm saying? Like, what if they don't even know? What if they don't have— they've never had a conversation with Chrystal Hurst at 7, 8 o'clock in the morning to say, hey, let's have a DTR, define the relationship. One of the girls on our team, she's new to our team, sent me a resume. I gave her some projects. She's amazing. I'm giving her more stuff to do. And we were just working together, doing the most. And she said, we need to have a DTR. And I was looking at her like, okay. She said, it's define the relationship. I had never heard of that. Now I use it all the time. Define it, express it, communicate it, explain what it is. Because if you don't, a lot of people are walking around mad because they just want everybody else in their world to know. What if you have to be the one that sets the pace? I was running in that Hot Chocolate run this past weekend. There were pace setters. There's pace setters in every race. I talk about pace setters in my book, She's Still There, because you got to have people in your life. Some people are promoters. They're cheering you from the sidelines. Some people are partners. They're running with you. Shonda and I, the friend of the team, we were running together, walking together for a portion of the race. And then we gave each other the freedom to separate. You do you, boo. I do me. But then there are pacers. They usually hold up a sign and let you know that I'm running a 12-minute mile, or I'm walking a 16-minute mile, and you are setting the pace to let everybody know what you doing. Some of you need to be the pace setters in your relationship and define what you're doing so that other people can decide if they're running with you or not. Here's another thing, y'all. Number 4, you need to learn the constant act of forgiveness and repentance. You need to learn how to say I'm sorry. You need to learn how to accept their apology because some of us are too quick we lonely because everybody has to meet a standard, one that they didn't know we had because we never defined the relationship. And then the other thing is when they mess up, they don't even know that they did. We don't tell them. We don't let them know that there was a break in our relationship or that they hurt us by their communication. Some of us, as we learned in our sister session, we are totally avoidant of difficult conversations because we don't want to cry. We don't want them to cry. We don't want to offend them. But in the process, we never go deeper.. And we have to stop being afraid to let people know we were hurt or to forgive them when they hurt us. Friendships will endure if it's a real good friendship, y'all, and if it's going to stand the test of time, it will involve small or sometimes large gaping wounds. Get in the habit of living in perpetual repentance, confessing you messed up, and turning from that. This is the same truth in marriage, y'all. Scripture says to be slow to anger and quick to listen. You know this about marriage. The Bible says forgive 70 times 7, infinitum. Just keep doing it. Because the quickest way to lose relationships is to be unwilling to forgive, unwilling to have the hard conversation, and unwilling to say, that hurt me. Learn to communicate what you are thinking and feeling. You cannot expect them to know they hurt you if you're not talking. So often we create narratives in our heads about friendships, about what a friend was thinking, what they were doing. We have to learn to give the benefit of the doubt, and we have to learn that we may have to say what they did that offended us, what they did that hurt us, what they did that was bothering us. And they may say, oh girl, I didn't even know. Now Michelle and I have had many of these conversations where she was all hurting in her feelings and I'm just oblivious. I'm like, you have to tell me. And then you know what? When she tells me, I have to resist the urge to be defensive. Communication is where we have to live. So y'all, you gotta choose wisely who you call friend. You have to lead by example. You have to be the friend you want. You have to DTR. You have to define the relationship. You have to learn the constant act of repenting and forgiving. You have to learn to communicate what you're thinking and feeling. And then the last thing is you need to learn to operate in conflict if it's a friendship that is worth the effort. Conflict often is the very thing that we are avoiding that can bring us closer in relationship. It can help us determine what boundaries need to be there, and boundaries sometimes help preserve relationship. Not dealing with conflict is what will ultimately cause a friendship's demise. Proverbs 21:6 says, "Wounds from a friend can be trusted." but an enemy multiplies kisses. At the end of the day, there's only one friend who will never over the lifetime disappoint. That friend is Jesus. And there are moments where even in your relationship with Jesus, you're like, are you serious right now? Are you going to let me go through this? You're not going to rescue me? You're not going to go to bat? And then if we live a little longer and if we trust and have faith, we realize that he causes all things to work out for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purposes. However, even though he's the best friend, sometimes life still doesn't go exactly the way we want to. So if you want to experience community, and Jesus picked 12, and he picked even one who he knew the whole time they were walking together was going to betray him, and yet, and still, he still chose that one. If this is what Jesus modeled for us, why wouldn't we do it? And Jesus was modeling friendship. He let them walk with him. He let them talk with them and he said, listen, even though I know you're not going to always fight for me, I'm still going to pour into you. Your most important relationship is your relationship with God, your relationship with Jesus. And he will teach you based on him being the kind of friend that you need him to be, what kind of friend you should be for others. Now, if you're in the inner circle and you're watching this either live as I'm recording it or replay, I want you to know that there is a 21-day, it's called Friends Forever: How to Create Your Sister Circle. Again, if you are watching this and you are not in the inner circle, there are questions every week when we release the podcast. So you can listen to those podcasts, gather your friends, and talk about those things. But the one thing that I want you to get out of this little chat here is that you have to be the one. If you're lonely, if you're one of those people that the CDC is including in their statistic, you don't have to stay that way. You don't have to create a whole story in your mind about why someone is not being a good friend or why they didn't call you back or why they didn't show up to to your party or why they didn't reciprocate. You don't have to create those stories and you don't have to live in that layer of negativity. You get to choose to build, to build the kind of relationships in your life that you really, really need. I was stewing on this and Laura, who initially asked me the question that I was responding to that got this whole party started about friendship, I came back and I said, Laura, I wanna add this to the answer to your question. And I said, I wanna reiterate this. And I'm reading words that I wrote that were transcribed. Okay. I wanna reiterate this because I think it's super important and worth repeating. You don't have to know. You don't have to know who's gonna be your best friend. You don't have to know exactly if this friendship is rolling out, if it's ebbing and flowing out. If you don't know, don't feel like you have to put it in a box. You can live in the unknown for a long time. And friendships, because you never know which friendships are gonna connect or reconnect. So if there is not a reason to end a friendship, if there's not hard landscape to draw a line, it's okay to live in the unknown. And it's okay to say to a friend that used to be a really good friend, "Hey, I miss you." When you have a time, send a card, send a text, and just to let them know that you love the seasons of their friendship. You love that you were close. You love that you had that season in your life, and you want them to know that you still appreciate them and desire God's best for them. You don't have to have all the answers to all the world's problems. While you're trying to build your circle. But what I do want you to know, that being intentional with your circle as you watch how to build it and watch the ebbs and flows, that's super important. Because I don't want you to be one of those people who says you're feeling lonely if you're also not doing what it takes to build the relationship, the depth, the connection, the authenticity that you desire. Seasons will have friendships. That's true. And sometimes we can't always identify what seasons our friendships are in, But what I can tell you is that friendships, community, closeness, authenticity is what makes life honestly worth living. And if you're married, I hope your husband's your best friend. But even if you're married, sometimes you just gotta go get your girls. And if you needed some tips on how to do that, how to pour it and how to build, then I hope the tips that I'm sharing today are helpful. How do you cultivate the friendships? That you want, you have to do the work. And then over time, just like everything else that you do in the garden of your life, if you put in the work, something will grow. Did you know that when farmers sometimes plant, that they toss out 4 or 5 times the amount of seed that they actually expect to grow? And then they go back and they look at what's thriving and what's not, and they pull what's not thriving, and then they pour everything they have into the seeds that are sprouting and growing and thriving. Sometimes friendships are like seeds. You cast them out all, and then you go back and you see what's actually working, and you put most of your effort into what you see naturally sprouting up. Friendship, relationships, community, your circle is something you've got to cultivate. And when you do, here's what I know: the garden of your life will be beautiful. I hope that's a blessing to you. Here's what I'd love to know. I'd love to know of those 6 tips, Which one resonates the most with you? Is it choosing a friend, leading by example, DTR, defining the relationship, repenting and forgiving, learning to communicate your own thoughts and feelings, or dealing with conflict? Tell me which one of those was the most jarring for you or resonated the most with you. I'd love to know which one you think is the easiest or the most difficult and which ones you'll take from this conversation. Because if I've talked for all these minutes and you don't have something to take away, my feelings are going to be hurt. So let me know in the comments what resonated, and I'd love to engage with you more there. All right, y'all, I'll see you next week.