I have a friend named Christi. We met in 2004, and she is the person I can shoot a text to when I’m unreasonably angry, when I’m sad for no tangible reason, when I’m frustrated or embarrassed, when I’m terrified and when I feel like my faith is growing cold. She is the person who can handle my ungodly feelings, my skewed viewpoints, my darkest attitudes, my strongest, misguided opinions. I can say anything to her that has crossed my mind without fear of judgment, without bracing for a lecture, without worrying about how she will feel about me after she hears what’s really going on in my heart.

But that doesn’t mean that Christi affirms everything I say as truth. No, when I view things through eyes that are blurred by emotion, when I reveal that my spirit is crushed and my heart is hard, she gently leads me back to truth. She reassures me that I am loved. She reminds me that God is sovereign. She points me back to the narrow way and then walks beside me, a true companion along a path that is sometimes rocky and hard to bear.

More than once she has talked me down when I was about to say or do something incredibly unwise because of anger, jealousy, fear, or a basic loss of godly perspective. She has a way of recentering my thinking with just a few kind, loving, and true words. There’s really no way to overstate the value of such a friend.

And when I have already said or done something incredibly unwise, she receives me with open arms. With grace and care and sympathy. What breaks my heart breaks hers. What toubles me troubles her. She knows what I really need–not empty words about how I’m enough, but soul-mending truths about His greatness.

We all need one friend in life who will truly hear and see us exactly as we are and love us fiercely despite it all. But we need more than that. We all need a friend who isn’t satisfied to just make us feel good about ourselves. We need one that gently points us back to the truth that God is good, and His way is the path to life, godliness, and authentic joy.

I think this is what the writer of Proverbs was talking about when he wrote that the wounds of a friend are faithful. We would all do well to try to be the kind of friend who can gently guide someone we love when they need it. When we correct one another, we should do it with humility and a broken-heartedness for our own sins and shortcomings. We should sympathize with each other the way Jesus does, as people who have been tempted in every way, with the very real knowledge that, unlike Jesus, temptation often leads to sin in our own hearts.

Christi is such an example to me of what pure friendship and faithful love looks like. She isn’t willing to let me wallow in ungodly thinking, but when she extends a hand to help me climb out of the pit, she does it with humility and kindness. If her gentle truth is a wound, it is the kind that heals much more than one moment’s bad thinking. I’m grateful for her faithfulness and the ways that she teaches me how to honor God through friendship.