Letting Her Go

Trouble pursues the sinner, but the righteous are rewarded with good things.

“I might start eating lunch with Maria,” Katy told her mom as they drove home from the grocery store.

“Oh? Did something happen with Izzy and Ayla?” her mom asked.

Katy shrugged. “Now that we’ve started middle school, I feel like we don’t have as much in common as we used to. They’ve been watching videos on YouTube that make me uncomfortable and talking about sometimes hanging out with older kids who vape.”

“It sounds like Izzy and Ayla are making decisions that will get them into trouble,” Katy’s mom said. “I’m proud of you for noticing.”

Katy had known Ayla and Izzy since kindergarten, while she and Maria had just met—but Katy had a feeling she wanted to know Maria better. “Maria makes good choices,” she told her mom. “And we have a lot of the same interests.”

“Lunch with Maria sounds like a very wise plan. Why don’t you try it this week and see how things go?”

Did you know that very few people keep the same friends for their entire lives or even for most of their life? While some twenty-five-year-olds are still best friends with someone they met in kindergarten, far more people have different sets of friends at different points in their life. We change over time, and it makes sense that our friendships might change for a variety of reasons.

Growing apart from a friend isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if she is consistently making choices you know are wrong or dangerous. The Bible warns us that making bad decisions repeatedly will lead to trouble while making good decisions will be rewarded. If a friend is constantly choosing actions we know are sinful and encouraging us to do the same, we need to rethink that friendship—no matter how old or young we are.

Things to Think About

• Ask an adult you love about a friendship he or she lost due to a friend making unwise or unhealthy choices. How did they handle the situation?
• Do you have classmates, friends, or neighbors who are starting to make bad decisions? Ask an adult you love how to handle those changing relationships.

DAILY ACT OF FRIENDSHIP

If you need to make a friendship change because of repeated unhealthy choices, look around for someone who is making better decisions, and start working on developing a new friendship.