Can We Be Friends?. Rebecca Frech

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      Can We Be Friends?

      Rebecca

      Frech

       Our

       Sunday

       Visitor

       www.osv.com

      Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

      Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.

      Huntington, Indiana 46750

      Except where noted, the Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible — Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 1965, 1966, 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

      Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Frech. Published 2018.

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      All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission from the publisher. For more information, visit: www.osv.com/permissions.

      Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

      Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.

      200 Noll Plaza

      Huntington, IN 46750

      1-800-348-2440

      ISBN: 978-1-68192-262-1 (Inventory No. T1950)

      eISBN: 978-1-68192-263-8

      LCCN: 2018932966

      Cover and interior design: Lindsey Riesen

      Cover art: Shutterstock

      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

      About the Author

      Rebecca Frech is a Catholic author, speaker, CrossFit coach, and the managing editor of The Catholic Conspiracy website. She is the author of the best-selling Teaching in Your Tiara: A Homeschooling Book for the Rest of Us, a co-host of the popular podcast The Visitation Project, and a columnist for the National Catholic Register. She and her husband live just outside Dallas with their eight children and an ever-multiplying family of dust bunnies.

      Dedication

      For Kara, who still loves me even though I write books.

      Contents

       Introduction

       Chapter 1 A Case for Friendship — Why Do We Even Need Friends?

       Chapter 2 What Is a Friend?

       Chapter 3 How Many Friends Do You Really Need?

       Chapter 4 Stop Waiting to Be Asked

       Chapter 5 You Say “Alone” As If That’s a Bad Thing

       Chapter 6 Alone in a Crowd

       Chapter 7 Be Yourself, Not an Impostor

       Chapter 8 Family Issues

       Chapter 9 Friendship Issues

       Chapter 10 What Are You Willing to Invest?

       Chapter 11 Personality Types

       Chapter 12 So What if They Aren’t Like You?

       Chapter 13 In Praise of Our Virtual Friends

       Chapter 14 My Useless Friends

       Chapter 15 Love the One You’re With

       Chapter 16 Benefit of the Doubt

       Chapter 17 Stay Within the Lines — Creating Healthy Boundaries

       Chapter 18 Friends for a Reason or a Season

       Chapter 19 Saying Goodbye

       Chapter 20 Friendship with God

       A Little Something from Grandma

      Introduction

       “Life is nothing without friendship.”

      — Cicero

      When I first began thinking and talking about writing this book, I was surprised at the reaction of the people I had mention it to. It didn’t seem to matter who they were, when I said the word “loneliness,” their own tales of being and feeling isolated would pour out. Almost everyone, it would seem, is lonely.

      I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the loneliness that seems to run rampant in our world. Never in history have people been more connected than we are now. We’re all walking around with easy access to almost every person we’ve ever met. A scroll through the directories on our phones nearly always turns up someone to talk or chat with. Silence and time to ourselves are now completely optional. Our phones come with us everywhere (if you have kids or a dog, you don’t even pee alone anymore!). Which has many of us wondering: If I’m never by myself, why do I feel so lonely?

      We’re not meant to be solitary creatures. Way back in the beginning, God looked at Adam and declared that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. It wasn’t long before God created Eve. They had a couple of kids, and then a few more. Those first people could have spread out and gone anywhere, but history shows us that they mostly stayed together. They congregated in tribes and then towns, not just for safety but also for companionship. Fast-forward thousands of years and