Hi, this is Stacey Eldridge with the Ransom Heart Podcast. I'm so happy to be with you today and today

I'm going to be sharing from another portion of my new book, Free to Be Me, Becoming The Young Woman God Created You to Be.

It's a book that I wrote specifically for teen girls ages 12 to 18

to help them become the woman they're meant to be. These are tough years they're

navigating. So today we're going to be talking about friendships. I'm going to read

a little bit from a chapter I wrote on friendships, just a small portion, and then talking

with two fathers, one of current teenage girls, and one who is the father of girls who are no

longer teenagers, but who has

weathered those storms. A true friend never gets in your way

unless you happen to be going down," said Arnold H. Glasgow.

My friend ate a slug once.

She and her friends came upon it while they were exploring the fields by your home.

They rolled over a stump and there it was in all of its

bulbous slimy glory. I dare you to eat it. We need friends. Of course we do. We are image bears of the living God in one of the best ways our feminine hearts bear his image is in our desire for relationship.

We are relational to our core, just like God. We have a deep

desire and capacity for relationship and just like God we want to be chosen and

wanted. We want to be

pursued by others not for what we can do but for who we are.

It's a good desire and one that can get us into trouble if we aren't aware of it.

People get into all kinds of trouble with pure pressure,

caving in to do things, saying things, wearing things, even eating things that they don't really want to because they want to belong.

Be included, fit in, be a part of the group.

...