Yesterday, I was thankful again for some of the angels God gifted me as friends, This Girl called me up, asked to take me to lunch and later added seeing a movie to our hang-out and Lord knows I didn’t know I needed to relax till I lay in my bed at the end of the day reminiscing on how beautiful the day went, but even more, how relaxed I felt.

Let friendship not just be in our mouth, lets go a little further and put some action behind it shall we? But no, this post isn’t about Christiana or my day out or a need to have friends like her (Although i’m sure you’d have caught the point by now, lol).

We saw ‘What Men want‘ at the cinema and if you know me, you’re probably thinking ‘That’s not Rubie’ cause you know that it’ll be my last option if I was going to a cinema to watch a movie and the movie choice was up to me. The reason is that I find a lot of Black-American romance movies very profane, added to that, they’re also quite explicit and because I’m team ‘Guard your mind and heart’, I try to stay away from those things as much as I can because I genuinely don’t think I can handle it.

But Christiana wanted to see it and truthfully I had seen some good reviews as well so I obliged and didn’t object. This post is also not a review of the movie but of a trend that was accentuated in the movie.

It brought a flash back of a girl in my teenage church who once shared at one of the ‘Girl talk’ sessions at youth church camp, how her sisters husband had started to look at her lustfully while he was dating her sister and even went further to tell her that she was the one he wanted even if it was her sister he was marrying. (Yes, The effrontery!). Sadly, it was all verbal communication and not one she could screenshot and go show her sister who was about to get married then (Oh Lord, that you’ll give us the spirit of discernment to see through these facades, both male and female alike!).

She approached her second sister and told her what had happened over the months leading to the wedding and the other sister accused her of seducing him and went further to advise her not to tell the sister about to get married, so she didn’t. When she was sharing this story and seeking advice, her sister was married to this man and she had been running away from him the whole duration of the marriage (How she moved from kettle to pot! ugh).

In ‘What men want‘, there’s a very similar turn out of events, similar to a movie called ‘Boy, bye‘. There, a recently divorced friend, found out that her best friend’s boyfriend was actually married and so she took it to the ‘counsel’ of close friends to seek advise on what to do as she didn’t want to appear as the ‘Kill-joy’, ‘bearer of bad news’ or ‘jealous friend’. The ‘counsel’ of friends decided against telling her directly and just set up a scenario where the wife would meet them two in an inappropriate state (in the case of the movie, in bed). So these friends went ahead and plotted this decision.

On #QuestionAnsweringFriday on our Instagram page, a couple of weeks ago now, I received a similar question from a girl who asked if she should tell her best friend that her boyfriend was secretly messaging her, even while they were still in a relationship. And watching What men want and Boy bye just brought all these occurrences back and made me begin to question friendship in our generation.

How we would be scared of being named ‘jealous’ over telling the truth, or how we’d be willing to watch the people closest to us walk into fire because we don’t want to be the bearers of bad news! like what?

By God’s grace, I’m the friend that my best friends fiance wouldn’t even want to find out that he likes me, because once I so much as sense it (spiritually now), my best friend is knowing and not just knowing but walking away because if at fiance level you’ve still not been trained and taught by the Holy spirit to be committed to one, I don’t think that’s somebody spiritually fit for marriage, so yes, i’ll be snitching you straight up.

In that moment, as much as I know the hurt it will bring her, I know also the compilation of hurt I will be saving her from in the future, so we’ll mess up the now just to preserve the future, obviously as led by the Spirit of God.

My number one trait I look out for in all my friendships since I knew the real meaning has been ‘honesty’, honesty to yourself and honesty to me as your friend. It’ll shock you to know that it is not even god-fearing because I’ve been good friends with unsaved people and God has used that friend-relationship to draw them to God, If I decided to make friends with only saved people, I can’t imagine the number of people that I was led to bless, slip through just because I decided to make only saved friends. (Ps. not everyone of us can handle this, until you’re sure you won’t be influenced, please there’s nothing wrong in sticking around only saved people, let God be the one to move you).

If you want good friends around you, it starts with you being a good friend. What’s your testimony as a friend to the people around you? I think we should all think about this.

I say this with all conviction, that if you are scared or concerned about telling any friend of yours the truth that could save them trauma in the future, however complicated the situation, you need to reevaluate that relationship and pray about it also. It is not normal or okay.

Perfect love casts out all fear.