Vin and I are making a late dinner after the kids are in bed, and I’m stirring cream into béchamel sauce – which sounds impressive, but I’m pretty sure “béchamel” is just French for “stupid-easy white sauce.” Cream, flour, salt, butter. A dash of nutmeg. Stir ‘til thickened, and done. One pretentious recipe calls for 35 minutes of stirring, but…ain’t nobody got time for that.

If I were really trying to impress you, I’d tell you we ate it over sandwiches with an equally fancy-sounding French name: croque madame. But in all honesty (and because I think it’s funny) I’d also tell you that the undignified-sounding translation of that is “Miss Crunchy.” Snort.

It’s a ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg and stupid-easy white sauce. That’s basically it. We can split hairs over the type of bread used, or whether or not you really should stir the sauce for at least twenty minutes (not happening in my house), or the details of how runny the yolk in the egg is supposed to be. But there’s no getting around the fact that it’s just an egg sandwich with ham and cheese and sauce.

Or a ham and cheese sandwich with egg and sauce. Whatever.

Impressing each other instead of being authentic and real, or arguing over rhetoric — ain’t nobody got time for that, either.

Over the last few weeks I’ve talked with several friends about some really painful situations. These relationships have gone past the superficiality of impressing each other, forged beyond the insecurities of hairsplitting debates and comparison. But because my kids participate in the conspiracy known as Operation Create Chaos While Mom is on the Phone, most of these conversations happen online — happy profile pictures scroll upwards as we type transparency back and forth to each other, discussing hard things in life that are breaking us open. There are foreign words for this, but they’re neither fancy nor fit to print.

Life is full of beauty and grit and these are geodes, deep friendships formed by pressure and fire…rough and plain on the outside, and only beautiful when broken open.

But you have to be brave to be vulnerable. How do we get past the surface? Where do we find the plumb line between shallow attempts to impress each other and divisive debates about our personal preferences?

Maybe here.

The Quiet Fight Between Women is an honest, in-depth study full of wisdom and scriptural truth about authentic friendships and the fight against friendly fire. It addresses unity, community, the comparison trap and the to-judge-or-not-to-judge dilemma.

To say that judging is always wrong is incorrect theology. We need to be precise that we are not to judge the character of the heart of a person, or to condemn people, but instead to show grace, while at the same time being so familiar with scripture that when we see sin or warning of corrupt character through the fruit in someone’s life, we choose the path of righteousness, to love in grace but not be led astray.

– Angie Tolpin, The Quiet Fight Between Women

You know what I love about how it’s set up? Short sections. I do have time for those. I’ve been going through the study at my leisure with my headphones on during the afternoon (because my kids also participate in the conspiracy known as Everyone Rush to Mom’s Computer Whenever Speech Comes Out of It) or in the evenings after they’re in bed. The videos are less than five minutes each, and the reading portions are about the same length as a blog post. There is prayer. There’s a private facebook group. There are downloadable options for journaling. There’s a giveaway.

Also, I haven’t noticed any tricky French words so far.

In full disclosure, if you purchase the study through any links from my site, I get a commission. And in further disclosure, I’ll probably either put it toward surgery expenses or an irresponsible latte purchase at Kaladis.

One more thing…if you are the kind of person who repeatedly pauses the video to check out the books on Angie’s shelves, you are my people. xoxo

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Related:

on the same side: fighting friendly fire with grace

a force to be reckoned with: the power of a united front

grace note: pursuing harmony without preaching to the choir

ten ways we push our mom friends away (from The Masterpiece Mom)