S2 E15 We Did This To Ourselves - The High Five

Through a deeply personal story and a simple but unforgettable metaphor—the “high five”—this episode uncovers how two people can both reach out… and still walk away feeling rejected.

This isn’t about blame.
 It’s about awareness.

Because somewhere along the way, we stopped going first.
 We started protecting ourselves instead of connecting.
 And now we’re all standing there… hands halfway up.

If you’ve ever felt overlooked, misunderstood, or hesitant to reach out again—this one is for you.

Thanks for listening to Me Again, God with Charlene Condu.
If today connected with you, I’d love to hear your story.

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You’re not alone in this walk — we’re learning, growing, and coming back to God together, one episode at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

It's me again. God. Faith fell none. Went flat. I knew your name. I knew your word, but I wasn't living in there.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Welcome back to Me Again, God. I'm your host, Charlene Condu. We're moving forward in this series of We Did This to Ourselves. If you're just joining us, go back. Start from the first episode in this series. I promise it's worth it. We've been building something together these last few weeks, and I don't want you to miss any of it. For those of you who are caught up, welcome back. We're exploring why it is difficult for us as women to create a support group of other women. Today's the one I've been both looking forward to and slightly dreading because today we're holding up the mirror, and I'm holding it up for myself first. Last week we talked about why we don't connect, and I gave you the surface level answers. Too busy. We don't want to seem weird. She probably has enough friends already. But today I want to go deeper because those are the excuses we tell our we tell other people. Today, I want to talk about the real ones, the ones we tell ourselves at 11 o'clock at night when the house is quiet and we're being honest for the first time all day. So the number one excuse is I'm too busy. And listen, I hear you. I really do. You're running a household, building a career, raising kids, maybe doing some volunteer work. So here's my typical day. I get up at 3 a.m. I drink my coffee, I do my devotions. Between 5 and 6 a.m., I have breakfast with Jason. 6 to 7 a.m. notes for what I need to accomplish with my media. 7 to 4. That's my corporate job. That's nine hours devoted just to that. 4 to 5 p.m., I get myself cleaned up, any house chores, I make dinner, 5 to 6. Jason's out of work. We have dinner, I clean up. Now 6 to 8 p.m. I go back to work again. This is my mag media, me again, God. And uh there I'm writing, recording, answering emails. 8 p.m., that's a hard stop. Saturday night to Sunday night, that's Sabbath. Saturday morning to Saturday night is a, it's like a bit of a cramming day to get down food prep, shopping, make media that needs attention before phones go down. Somewhere in between all of that, you're supposed to find time to cultivate a friendship. When exactly? Tuesday at 11 p.m. when you finally breathe. Except here's what's funny. Have you ever heard the term if you want something done, give the job to a busy person. 100%. God never gives you more than you can handle. Over the years, I've often said God never gives us more than we can handle, but I think he has me confused with someone else. Yet he shows me over and over. He knows me more than I know myself. He makes the time for me when he wants me to do something. It's as easy as that. The friendships we cultivate, the testimonies that are ours to share, that is what is important. I read in a book many years ago about organizing your house. Well, I'm not at home right now, but when I find that exact title and author, I will put it in my website under my preferred reading list. The author made such a profound comment in that book that it stuck with me decades later. If you pull up in your driveway and your neighbor sees you and asks you if you'd like to come over for a cup of coffee, and you tell them you're too busy, you need to fix your life. You should never be so busy you can't take that moment with another human. That moment is the essence of what we are here for. And that is a moment that cultivates friendships. Sometimes we need to learn about what not to do from people. I believe those lessons are just as important as the lessons we learn from people who get it right. So my mom used to save chores for what she called cleaning days. So in her mind, she was she was not company ready until directly after cleaning days. That is one of the things I learned not to do as a young woman. I found it much easier to keep an organized home and clean as I go. For one, I never want to spend a day of my life cleaning. And two, I never wanted to say no to people coming over because my house was not company ready. That's too much missed opportunity. I also learned something from the late and great Charlie Kirk. He was very intentional about his time. He had a schedule that he did not veer from. Of course, most of us are not as busy as he was, but if you were on his schedule for 10 minutes, he gave you 100% for 10 minutes. That's a practice I love and I've adapted. I have been able to modify that. As I've said, I do not have that kind of time demand on my life. However, being intentional about my time is paramount for me. So if I have plans and someone asks me for coffee in the middle of my busyness, I will intentionally devote a certain amount of time to that and let the rest of my day adjust. Those moments, those unexpected, random moments that a person wants to share a moment of their life with you is precious. And that right there opens those doors to deep and meaningful friendships. You need to get out of the rut of being busy. When someone asks you, How are you? get away from the answers like, oh, I am so busy. Well, I woke up breathing. That's a good thing. I'm making it work. It kind of tells the other person that you're simply too busy to be standing there talking to them right now, but you are. Try changing that reply to something like, God is good, he keeps me busy. A statement like that shows you as a person that recognizes that the things you are busy with is God given. Busy is a blessing. Your kids are a blessing, your job is a blessing, your house is a blessing. Most responses we give make them sound like we do not appreciate them. Busy is not a personality, and survival is not the goal. So change your mindset. Slow down when you need to. Remember the moments we're here on earth for. If someone asks you for coffee time and you absolutely cannot do it at that moment, that is okay. But instead of saying sorry, I can't, too busy, say, I would love to. I'm in a bit of a time crunch right now. But what about tomorrow at this time? Would that work for you? In those moments, you're you're drinking coffee and it's just you and her. Don't have your phone sitting in front of you. Don't judge her by her appearance or what she's wearing. Don't look around her house and imagine if she asks you to clean what you would do to it from top to bottom. Lean in. Listen. This is that moment. That moment that you get to listen and maybe share. This is that moment that you might get to change a life, or you might find she changes yours. Some of us struggle with real relationships. Real women are messy. Real friendships are, let's let's call it what it is, inconvenient. And we have gotten so comfortable with the imaginary ones, the ones on social media, the ones we just text, we don't know how to do the real thing anymore. And remember this too. As this friendship builds, life will happen. Your responses to the life events may be different than hers. Don't read into them. The devil is always looking to separate people. Ask questions, delve in for understanding, pray for guidance, and most importantly, love her through it. I want to tell you about the worst high five I ever threw. I had a best friend in my 20s. I mean best, best, best friend. The kind you think is gonna be in your life forever. We belonged to a coffee of the month club, an actual coffee of the month club. Once a month we were sent a new coffee flavor. Every week we would sit out on the deck and sip through our favorite ones and talk. I mean, talk about everything dreams, life, God, the future. We were gonna figure it all out right there over a good cup of coffee. I was living in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania at the time, and my plan was to move to Arizona eventually. And I'd been talking to her since we met about my dream to go west. She knew all about it. It was not a secret, it wasn't sudden. It was just my dream, and she was my best friend, so of course she knew. Then one day, out of the blue, she announced she and her husband were expecting a baby. And I was so legit happy for her, genuinely, completely over the moon happy, a baby. I thought, this just got even better. I get my best friend and a baby to love. And then my opportunity to move to Arizona came through. And I took it. When I told her I I reached out my hand to her and I said, I'm gonna be coming back often. I want to watch this baby grow up. I still want the late nights on the deck. I still want the talks over dark roast chocolate almond brew. I want to rock a baby, I still want you. She told me if I left not to look back. She said, if you go, this friendship is over. Long story short, I still moved. I did everything to keep in touch. I called often, but it just went to voicemail. I wrote letters. I flew back a few times, but she wouldn't see me. Nothing. And something happened to me after that. Something quiet and sneaky that I didn't even notice at first. That changed me. It hardened me. I started checking women before I let them close. Looking for the excess sign. What excuse do I find now so I can leave before it'll hurt? Looking for the price tag. What is this friendship going to cost me? Asking myself, what happens when I disappoint her? What happens when my life doesn't fit her plan? And slowly, without ever making a conscious decision, I stopped reaching out as much. I stopped going in for the high five because nothing is worse than your hand just hanging there. But here's what I didn't see until much later. My friend Lynn, she had a story too. In her happiest moment, the moment she had waited for her whole life, her her baby was finally coming. And her best friend left. Packed up and moved across the country. And she reached out her hand too. She said, Stay, I need you. This is the moment I always dreamed of, and I need my person here. And I left anyway. Just her hand hanging in the air. Two women both reached out, both got left hanging. Both went home and sealed themselves up a little tighter. Both told themselves, that's it, I'm done reaching. There was no villain in that story. There were just two women so focused on their own outstretched hand that neither one of us could see the other ones. And that is what we do to each other. We are walking around wounded from high fives that the other women the other woman doesn't even know she didn't return. We're carrying hurt that we were never intended. We're building walls against women who are building the exact same wall at the exact same time for the exact same reason. We are all walking around with our hands halfway up. Nobody wants to be left hanging. So nobody goes in for the high five. And we all go home alone. So here's where I have to turn this mirror on both of us. Because the hurt is real and the scar is real. But at some point, and I say this with all the love I have, at some point we have to decide that one bad or one misunderstood event in a friendship is not the blueprint for every friendship that comes after it. We cannot keep punishing women who haven't hurt us yet for what women who have hurt us did. A friendship that requires you to make yourself smaller to survive is not a friendship. It's a contract. You're allowed to walk away from a contract, but here's the other side of that mirror. Sometimes we are the one who set the terms. Sometimes we are the ones who said, love me on my conditions or don't love me at all. Sometimes we left first and called it self-preservation. I see that in me. And every single one of us. Wounded and guarded and desperately wanting connection and absolutely terrified of what it costs. And we've been doing this so long we forgot we are doing it. We did this to ourselves. So here's where I want to leave you today. Somewhere out there, it's a there's a woman with her hand halfway up. She wants to go in for the high five. She's been thinking about it. She almost did it last Sunday in the lobby. She almost sent that text. She almost said, Hey, do you want to grab coffee sometime? But she talked herself out of it because she didn't want to seem weird, because she was busy, because she's been burned before. Because what if the other woman doesn't put her hand up? And somewhere out there, that other woman is thinking the exact same thing about her. Two hands halfway up, waiting for someone to go first. This week, try saying something to that woman you've been lifting your hand for a high five to. This time, let her see it. Learn from the men on this one. No script, no judging, no expectation, no guard. Until next time, work on those friendships.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

I've been walking in circles, and as low as I couldn't escape. The chaos got so loud in my head, I couldn't hear a word you said. I thought I was strong doing it on my own. But here I am again.