For the women’s session, the men left the building so Lisa Cotter could just address the ladies. She stressed the importance of our female friends because being feminine can be complicated and only women truly understand what it is like to be a woman. We need each other. But how do we create deep and lasting friendships?
Three Types of Friendship
Aristotle said there are three different types of friendship:
Friendships of Utility– This type of friendship is based on someone being useful to you, like a friend from a class.
Friendships of Pleasure– These friendships are based on the fun times together (teammates, friends from a club, etc.)
Friendships that are useful or pleasurable are not necessarily bad, but as soon as the usefulness or pleasure is not there, the friendship ends.
Friendships of Virtue (Excellence)– These friendships are based upon doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way. These are deepest forms of friendship.
Noelle Garcia had the opportunity to speak to the ladies of the conference today on the topic of authentic friendships. We as a generation consider ourselves very lonely, despite the amount of “friends” we may have and the amount of “likes” we receive on social media.
We need relationships to survive. Specifically, we need our female friendships. Women are sensitive; we are able to sense. We can sense when others are in need. We can sense when someone needs us. So, Noelle challenges us to have this attitude toward our friends: “You are responsible for them and getting them through this journey.” That journey can be many things ranging from one bad instance in their life to the journey to Heaven.
Sarah began by talking about how challenging it is to be woman in today’s world. She also discussed how as women, we often fake it and are not honest about what is going on in our heads. We are quick to say “I’m fine” and we are not always real about the negative thoughts that we are having.
She then discussed the “Three Cs” that impact our lives the most- control, confusion, and competition.
We desire to be control of our own lives instead of letting God have control. Though we desire to have control, we need to trust in the plans that God has for us.
This morning, Rachel Leininger spoke at our women’s session about how our identity as a women is revealed by God.
She began with reminding us that we are tempted to find our identity in other places and things that give us our worth, whether that be our place on a sports team, the role that we play in our family, our spot in a group with friends, or our grades in school. But every time, those things that we let define us are going to fall short of telling the whole story of who we are. The world is really good at reducing our identity.
