Meditation in Job 6

I am editing YEAR TWO of the Bible Book Club these days. I finished YEAR ONE last week! YAY! It ended up being 1330 pages when put to 18 pt! (I should probably make another copy that is 12 pt and see how long it is.)

After my whole big post yesterday, wouldn't you know that my blog post about Job 6 would be about friends! I came upon this line I wrote about Job 6:

In Job 6, he compares them [his friends] to a riverbed which is dried up in the summer when it is most needed. When he most needed his friends, they were a disappointment to him and not kind.

While my friends are always very kind, I was disappointed (not the two I finally processed with about everything but the other three). I was a dry riverbed at the end of the summer, and I needed water for my soul where there was none.

I think I learned a very valuable lesson. I need to stay in balance. I got out of balance due to lack of boundary with one of those friends. She exhorted me to "Set boundaries," not realizing that I was very balanced until she came along with what I perceived were demands upon my time.  I cried out that I had much on my plate, and I felt pushed three times this summer by her. One of the times, I felt like she did hear me. So it delayed me really expressing myself. I read that the ISFJ does have trouble expressing, and when they do, it is sometimes with fear and anger.  All that said, I think it was a good interaction. I felt like I was not assigning motive, and she tried to talk verbal circles around me, but I kept on communicating and was not afraid to say that I was not assigning motives, but please put herself in my shoes as her responses were perceived by me as very insensitive. I felt like I communicated pretty well even though I was fearful in the midst of it. Usually, anger is not my MO, but it sometimes comes across that way because I am often fearful of expressing that I have feelings too. 

Lesson I have learned is that I need to be balanced, and balance means boundaries, even with people that I love and might perceive my boundaries as uncaring. When I get to dinners with my family and do not even look up, I have let my life get too out of balance. 

Both Kim and Nancy really see how much I work, but I do not think my full-time working friends see that. But Kim and Nancy are here in the area where the other two do not see my day-to-day life. I do think the other person who lives close by does see that, but she is often in her own world. I cannot bring her out of that to see me, but I think that has been my role with her for so long. I need to pray about that. I have tried to say, "Come to my house and will you pray with me over these people." She has responded to that, but our relationship would not naturally flow into my world but usually flows into hers, and I totally get involved in her story.  I have to call her attention to my story, and I think I need to do that more to have more balance. I realize that we have not had balance, but that is because her life has not been very great for quite a few years.  

When trouble comes your soul to try,You love the friend who just "stands by."Perhaps there's nothing he can do --The thing is strictly up to you;For there are troubles all your own,And paths the soul must tread alone;Times when love cannot smooth the roadNor friendship lift the heavy load,But just to know you have a friendWho will "stand by" until the end,Whose sympathy through all endures,Whose warm handclasp is always yours--It helps, someway to pull you through,Although there's nothing he can do.And so with fervent heart you cry,"God bless the friend who just 'stands by'!" 

Written by B.Y Williams, published in Poems That Touch The Heart by A.L. Alexander

 So weird to come across this poem because the line, "God bless the friend who just 'stands by'!" was what God told me when it came to this situation with the women who is separated from her husband. I want to be a good friend, and I think I am. And God has blessed standing by this woman.