Performance Enhancers

Vitamin 'supplements' and fake eyelashes have lots in common.

Kinda like Rogaine and Noxzema wrinkle-free face cream.

Nothing wrong with wanting to keep your body healthy and to try to keep what you got, (like hair and smooth skin)...but these can be 'covers' to hide facts. If the truth be told about every detail of our lives...well, ask Yankee's slugger, A Rod, or a True Beauty...you could be 'outed', and admirers could turn on you like a flipped western omelet on a Denny's skillet!

Being vulnerable to every person is not wise. Wearing your emotions on your sleeve can repelling and repulsive to most. Saying everything that bounces around your head in a crowded conference room will be remembered when the email lunch invites can't be found in your workplace Inbox. You can't avoid relating to others, and you should avoid even attempting that! You were made for relationships by the creative genius of the God who loves you. You cannot build a meaningful relationship based on fraud. 'Impressions' are powerful when they are authentic.

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." Proverbs 17:17

That is why God wants you to have at least one buddy. He has designed you with a craving to 'be real', and to be known deeply and accurately...baggage and all. You need to have someone who knows your dirty laundry and is not offended by the stink, but prompted to help you get to and through the cleaners! What a gift from God that He would send someone into your life that you could share your true self to with the perfect assurance that you would not be lessened or cheapened! Now that is a 'friend'!

Because we have a bent toward selfishness, we tend to count how many 'friends' we have on our Facebooks. What a mistake! Who in their right mind would share their innermost thoughts, fears, emotions, setbacks, failures, frustrations, hangups or addictions on the World Wide Web? Not surprisingly...many do! Why?

Because they long to be real to someone, somewhere.

You may be struggling with friendship at this very moment. You may be living in the days (or years) of a friendship deficit. Resist the temptation to become something you are not to impress people that you hope to meet. Do something different...become a friend to others as you wait for the friend you long for. Encourage the discouraged. Laugh at corny jokes. Open doors. Smile at 'strangers'. Be thoughtful. Do that 'act of kindness' thing. Be to others what you desire for yourself.

The Lord who made you will lavish you with His favor...and bless you with a friend who really will love you when the eyelashes are off and the hair is thinning....and for tougher times than those!