Fear of Friendlessness

 

Do you ever stop in your tracks and wonder if you have any friends who would take a bullet for you?

There's a word for that; at least according to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig:

nachlophobia (from the Greek for "loosely held together" and "fear". Pronounced nok-luh-foh-bee-uh.)  -  n. the fear that your deepest connections with people are ultimately pretty shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial in the moment, an audit of your life would reveal a smattering of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice, or loss.

For those of you familiar with the story of a paralyzed man's friends tearing a hole in a roof and letting the man down through it so Jesus could heal him, have you ever stopped and evaluated your personal relationships to the point of knowing what four friends of yours would go to the trouble of carrying you on a mat and damaging someone's personal property so you would have the possibility of being healed?

Forget about taking a bullet for you. Do you have any mat-carriers in your life?

Would YOU be willing to carry someone else on THEIR mat?

If you are susceptible to nachlophobia, it is the final phrase of the definition that might instill the most fear: "You were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice, or loss."

It takes a real investment in each other's lives for a friendship to be important enough to bring joy that is deeper than mere happiness and elicit a mutual sacrifice that is far beyond the inconvenience of a small favor.

Of course, that level of investment also runs the risk of causing pain when the relationship is lost.

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This train of thought takes me to some things I've been saying about "church membership" since April.

There is a difference between attending church and being part of the church, and if a person can easily say, "I'm gonna start going to this other church" without grieving the loss of fellowship with the church they're leaving, I wonder if they're a member or just an attender.

Truth is...risking pain and making sacrifices is abundantly worth the payout of joy that comes from having deep and abiding friends.