A woman had been telling the same story about her marriage for almost two years. Same complaint, same villain, same ending. Her closest friend had heard it enough times to recite it from memory.

On a walk one Tuesday the story started up again, and the friend had a decision to make in about four seconds. She could nod. Nodding is easier, nodding keeps the walk pleasant, and nodding is exactly what she had done for two years.

She stopped on the sidewalk instead and said the hardest sentence in the friendship. I love you, and I think you are only telling me half of it. Then she stood there while it landed.

There was a cold week after that. Then a phone call. Then a marriage that started getting better slowly, which is the only speed real things move.

Love is sacrificial. It is more than a word. It is how we give of ourselves and our possessions so others grow. That friend spent something real on that sidewalk. She spent the comfort of the friendship, and she spent it on purpose, because she wanted her friend whole more than she wanted the walk to stay easy.

Hebrews tells us to exhort one another every day, while it is still called today, so that none of us gets hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Here is what makes sin deceitful. It does not feel like sin. It feels like being right. We can narrate a version of our life for two years that is technically accurate and completely dishonest, and we will never catch it from the inside. That is why God put people around us.