What do you want in a friend as an adult?

I was sitting on a porch step with a friend the other day, and she talked about how friendship is different when you’re an adult and are going through a lot of changes.  We talked about relationships in general (you and other people, you and your spouse, you and your church, you and your church small group).  How much work SHOULD relationships be?  When one side is doing most of the emotional work, when is it time to try to talk about it to be sure there’s not a simple misunderstanding in the way?  When is it time to redraw boundaries, reflect and revise expectations, or even call it quits?  We talked around whether it was brave or selfish to do these things.  We don’t want to be people who only receive and never give, but how long can we give but not receive, and what is the “right” ratio for these things?  (I think we decided it’s hard and there is no “right” answer that fits every given situation because each situation is different.)  When we were talking about friendship in her current life, she said something like,  “I don’t even know what I WANT in friends anymore.  What should I want to do with my friends?  What do you want for your friendships?”  I thought it was a fantastic question that deserved a more thorough answer than the one I could give punch drunk on late autumn porch sunlight that day. 

Since I’ve been listening to the entire catalog of Sara Groves songs at work to get me through a destructively busy time, I found myself reflecting on the words of several of her songs about being with people you love.  Here are some of my thoughts about the kind of friend I want to be and what I value in friendships in four Sara Groves songs.

Just One More Thing
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-just-one-more-thing-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOu1Yh4QzTw

One of the most interesting things about learning to live with chronic health problems is the fact that I have HAD to slow down.  I have had to STOP over-committing, STOP over-scheduling, STOP acting as if my current body can do what my brain remembers it doing effortlessly in the past.  I have had to stop allowing myself to get stressed out about things that don’t need to be done but probably should be done and focus more on what needs to be done.  If something doesn’t need to be done and if I CAN’T physically do it, then I have to release myself from the guilt of not doing it, so I can focus my energy on doing what I CAN do, even if sometimes the only thing I can do is rest or maybe manage to drive over to friend’s place to be exhausted there instead of at home.

I characterize this song as frustrated and cranky and a little bit reflective and re-centering about the fact that the law and the gospel can be reduced to loving God and loving our neighbors.  The singer is giving herself a good talking to about the ways we can drive ourselves to distraction with all the things we could be doing at any one time and the way that we need to choose not to be distracted from the important work of loving each other by all the things we could be doing.  The chorus is a joyful shout about the freedom from getting wrapped around the axle about everything being demanded of you by others and yourself.

And love to me is when you put down that one more thing and say
I've got something better to do
And love to me is when you walk out on that one more thing and say
Nothing will come between me and you
Not even one thing

This.  This is where I want to get.  Without guilt, with joy and peace and contentment.  Not because I physically can’t do anything else but because I am choosing to do this thing.


Every Minute
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-every-minute-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AZfLOG1VhQ

This song is like a hug.  You should listen to it.  (Let me know if you want to borrow the CD.)  It’s a reflection on what is amazing about being with friends, about staying IN with friends instead of going out (or feeling like you should go out), about what it means to have a home (a place and people). 

And I can think of a time when families all lived together
Four generations in one house
And the table was filled with good food
And friends and neighbors
That's not how we like it now

'Cause if you sit at home you're a loser
Couldn't you find anything better to do?
Well, no, I couldn't think of one thing
I would rather waste my time on than
Sitting here with you

This was true when I was kid and there were so few other things I had to do.  There were no wrong choices when I had to choose between reading and playing outside with friends and playing inside with friends.  And on those long summer days when I knew I was going to be at my friend’s house again first thing in the morning, I didn’t want to leave even after the fireflies had settled down for the night, and it was too dark to do anything safely.  Every moment and every minute.  How did I forget this?  How can I be like a child and get this back?

While I was busy taking on too many wonderful activities and responsibilities, I didn’t get to do this, and then I grew up and forgot all about it, left it behind as if it were unimportant.  And it’s so very important that I think we FEEL it, we feel it missing, we feel its absence, and it hurts us, and we long for it, but we don’t even know what it is we are longing for until we find it and then we realize we are home, this is home, this is kairos time, this is what all eternity in heaven will be like.  And we don’t want it to end.


To Be with You
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-to-be-with-you-lyrics

This song is about family and the holidays.  For many people who don’t have great memories around Christmas, this song can be kind of fraught.  However, even if your holiday memories with your family are not positive (and many of my more recent ones are not), there is something about the warmth I feel toward the ones I love that this warm and nostalgic song evokes that makes me smile. 

We gather by the fire
Reminiscing by its light
The kids will be up early
But it's hard to say goodnight

To be with You, to be with You
I love this time of year
It always brings me here
To be with You

What I love about this song is that it so perfectly describes this feeling of rightness, of doing something we’ve done countless times again with people we love to be present with.  This is the time that matters; it is good to do this now, and it will be good to do it again and again.


Twice as Good
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-twice-as-good-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7WY9w_7v2Q

This joyful celebration of friendship is straightforward.  This is the kind of friend I want to be, and it is, frankly, why I will never have a large number of close friends.  I don’t have the physical capacity to support relationships like this with very many people, and that is okay.  God asks that I be faithful with what He’s given me, and I believe He leads people to each other to be there for each other in different ways and for different lengths of time.

When I am down and need to cry till morning
I know just where I am going
When I'm in need of sweet commiseration
To speak out loud
Raise a glass to friendship
And to knowing you don't have to go alone
We'll raise out hearts to share each other's burdens
On this road

Every burden I have carried
Every joy--it's understood
Life with you is half as hard
And twice as good

In the End
Once a friend asked me if I had any dreams.  That’s another post, but he asked it close to a time I went on a plane and, shortly after takeoff, when everything is getting smaller and further away, I saw this place at the end of a road and surrounded by trees and some fields, and there were three houses like 3 sides of a square and a big open yard for the fourth side, and I thought, I want to live in a place like that someday with Friend X and family on one side and Friend Y and family on the other side.

And I wish all the people I love the most
Could gather in one place
And know each other and love each other well
-from Every Minute

I think that is what heaven will be like, an eternity of that, enough time to develop that with everyone there, to live in that kind of communion forever.  What we experience here and now is but a glimpse of the joys to come, and I think true friendship gives us one of those glimpses. 


What about you?  On a more practical level, what do you look for in your friendships as an adult, what kinds of commitments and activities are reasonable, especially when money is tight?

Being Christ to the Creeper, Part II

Perhaps it boils down to this: What would Christ have me do here and now?  This poor dude has fallen in my path, and I am supposed to be a good neighbor and love extravagantly.  I'm supposed to meet his needs somehow because I am, as they say, the man on the ground at this moment.  This strikes me as a tad absurd because, frankly, I would say this kid does NOT need ME to try to teach him to be SOCIAL. 

I am an introverted, lonerish, antisocial person by inclination.  I LIKE being this way.  I suppose I could teach him how to repel people less obnoxiously, but obviously, he doesn't need my help overall with that.  He needs friends his own age to help him understand what is appropriate and what is not.  But let's be serious: how many 18-year-olds  at anime clubs do you know who have the sensitivity to notice this situation and the ability to do something to improve it? 

I'm not saying they're non-existent, but when I was in college as an upperclassman leading orientation groups, I had to reach out to some of my freshman to give them people to hang out with because their own peers couldn't do so.  I tried approaching the leadership of the club to ask them to take on this responsibility (I figure it's theirs), and that . . . didn't really work.  Maybe they need someone to teach them how.  : )  But I was a completely different person back then in a different place, and I had that to offer.  Now I don't. 

So we circle back to the question again: what would Jesus have me do besides pray for someone else to intervene?  Lacking any clear messages in 30-foot letters of fire, I turn to the gallery.  Your thoughts on what it means to love my neighbor in this case?

Being Christ to the Creeper

Once upon a time when I was younger and less physically broken, one of my jobs was befriending the lonely ones, the ones left outside the circle, the ones no one wanted.  I would protect them, the pasty and overweight ones, the socially awkward, the prickly, the unattractive.  Since I did not need friends or popularity or fitting in, I was free to be friends with those who needed friends but, for whatever reason, couldn't seem to make it with the regular people.  I felt like it was some sort of gifting or calling, a way to use my comfortable introversion to love people like Christ commands us to.  Now I am older, more physically broken and exhausted, and I don't have the energy to use this freedom any more, which is unfortunate because there's a guy at the anime club this semester who is starting to really creep me out.

In the anime club, I have always been there for the anime.  I have never been there to make friends, be part of the community, or fit in.  I don't live on campus; I'm not a student.  I do not need any friends in the club to have a nice time.  This has always worked out well (once the super-friendly folks have learned to leave me alone each semester) because it's good for these kids to make friends with their peers.  I have not needed to actually reach out and show kindness to an outcast when I have pretty much nothing to give.  With one notable exception, I have made no friends there, and it has been lovely.

Many of the folks in the anime club are a bit socially awkward.  This stereotype exists because it is based in observable fact.  Many of them are bad at eye contact and reading body language and understanding personal space, but they usually figure things out by the time they graduate.  Most of them find their tribes, even the ones who are incredibly annoying and awkward.  As a sort of maiden aunt, I watch all of this at a distance and am glad things work out, even if I am sometimes mystified. 

This semester has been different.  This semester has been incredibly uncomfortable.  This semester there is a guy who hasn't found his tribe, and he seems to want me to be his tribe because all the other natives flee screaming at his approach.

I have never met anyone so terrible at understanding body language and personal space.  He seems to take me scrunching up, leaning and moving away, refusing eye contact, and reluctantly talking brusquely in short answers when absolutely necessary as amazing encouragement to sit down, move cloers, be friends and talk and talk and talk about the same things 4 over and over and over again.  (At least he hasn't used the words "scrotum" and "anus" since the first time he opened his mouth to talk to me several weeks ago.)  He talks about his anime that he will make some day and its badass, junior-high-school-boy-humor-liking female main character and what he doesn't like about X, Y, and Z anime and about why he likes the Devil May Cry anime but hates Black Lagoon, etc., ad nauseum.  (If you're an anime fan, this will seem even more annoying to you than if you aren't.)  He does this to anyone who has a pulse and doesn't actually get up and just walk away.

Recently, because no one else will even talk to him, he has taken to following me out to my car, chattering all the way, and ignoring my LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE body language and really fast pace because he is that desperate to connect.

I know that if I want him to leave me alone, I need to just completely ignore him and not respond at all.  However, he is so lonely and sad that my old reflexes kick in, and I talk sometimes, un-encouragingly and grudgingly, because I don't want him to be completely alone in silence.  He is so young and so awkward, and I think he may not ever find any friends if he doesn't come across the college student equivalent of the old me soon.

I probably don't have to tell you that the following me to my car thing makes me really nervous.  Men I don't know in general make me wary and having to be trailed by one as I walk half a mile away to my car where there might not be anyone else around does not help.  I think that I probably need to just have the creeper talk with him or ask the club admins to intervene, but maybe I've been living in Minnesota too long (land of 10,000 ways to passive-aggressively indicate things instead of just saying them) or maybe I'm trying in a sort of half-assed way to be Jesus to this poor kid.  I mean, everyone avoids him, and that's really sad (even if I totally understand why they avoid him).  I was hoping someone would take him under their wing and help him understand the basics of body language, but they haven't even this far in to the semester. 

As maybe one of the few believers who attend the club, do I have some sort of responsibility toward him?  Because I'm sure acting like I do.  And as long as I sub-consciously feel responsible, I won't be able to just tell him leave me alone or ask the folks in charge of the club to intervene.  Thus far, the best I've been able to do is drag my poor friend to the club to try to act as a buffer and escort to my car, and that's not fair to him.

So, Christians, your thoughts?  Everyone, your strategies?

Losing your life to gain what

When she started to follow Jesus seriously, she gave up the thing she was best at and loved most: writing about music.  Recently, as we were studying Luke 9, she wondered if that counted as laying down her life to save it.  At the time, she thought it was.  She couldn't see any way that her writing about secular music could lead anyone to Jesus, so she left it behind.  (Oh, hyper-evangelicalism, you make me so sad.)  As far as I can tell, she didn't really replace it with anything.  So now she is not doing what she loves and not necessarily leading anyone to Jesus that she can see, and she is miserable (for this and many additional reasons). 

It seems like she is more miserable because a couple of people in the group ARE writers and see that as part of who they are in Christ.  And it kindles this longing inside her that she isn't sure she shouldn't smother. 

I had to resist the urge to respond right away, though several things came to mind.

• The Bible doesn't necessarily indicate that we need to leave behind anything that isn't directly related to leading souls to the kingdom or whatever evangelical, Christianese phrase you prefer.
• Jesus didn't tell soldiers or tax collectors to stop what they did, drop everything, and go become full-time preachers.
• The Bible does say we should work heartily as unto the Lord, not for men or praise. 
• The Bible doesn't really indicate that vocation and avocation must be the same and anything that is not avocation must be abandoned.
• God loves beauty and beautiful things, and good art is beautiful.
• God sees beauty in broken things/people other people think are worthless and dirty.
• It's okay to work hard at a craft and create beautiful things; we serve a creator God.
• What exactly did stopping writing about what you love do to help you gain abundant life?

I shut my mouth firmly and resisted the urge to say anything or even follow up because she was Not Making Eye Contact in that skittish way she has of offhandedly revealing truths about her life that she is deathly afraid will get her judged in some way.   Normally, I would not have the presence of mind to notice the body language and think thoughts and stop myself from saying them.  Perhaps this gluten-free thing my doctor is having me do is a good idea.  Or maybe the Holy Spirit hit the brakes for me?

I really need to ask a lot of follow-up questions to get a better understanding of the situation before I start throwing out statements that she could take as judgments.  (She can twist almost any statement into something she perceives as a judgment. : )  If I understand the situation better, maybe I can ease things slowly into a direction where she can think things through and make a different decision now.

Things I want to know

• What did she write? 
• Who was her audience? 
• When did she make this decision? 
• Why, exactly did she give it up (there had to be multiple reasons beyond the simple one she tossed out there)? 
• Does she feel the same way about these reasons now? 
• Can she see a way she might be able to use her writing for a purpose she feels is more redemptive? 

Any other questions you can think of that I can try to slowly and slyly trot out there so as not to scare this fragile honesty away?

I don't know how to love her and other situations that make for tragic musicals

There's this person in this church group I am nominally in charge of.  If I say she sometimes seems to be made of glass, I don't mean that she is beautiful and delicate.  I mean that it's like she got scraped raw by life and then rolled in broken glass, which stuck to the blood, and when she lets the cloak she covers herself with fall, no one can figure out how to comfort her in a way that will not damage both.  There was a really bad meeting which ended with a lot of us trying to hold back tears because how on God's green earth do you show someone that wounded and broken and jagged that she is loved and liked and wanted?  I knew things were bad when I found myself humming Nancy's song from Oliver.  It's a good thing I only really know that first line, or I likely would have had the blasted song stuck in my head whole for weeks.

I got out the only available version of the Five Love Languages from my library (The 5 Love Languages for Children), but it wasn't really much help because it's aimed at parents and is about dealing with children.  This person holds down a job she hates because it provides benefits, a paycheck, and a cushion to allow her beloved to do the less lucrative and somewhat seasonal work he loves.  She is an adult.

When it was just occasional grumblings and the beginnings of a tendency to tell the same painful stories on endless repeat and hijack the conversation, I was able to redirect things, sometimes with subtlety and panache and sometimes with inartistic but effective bluntness.  But when she said that she dreaded coming every week because it made her even more miserable and she only came because she knew her husband wouldn't want to come without her even though he adores the group, we were all at a loss.  Most of us kind of enjoy the group and the time we spend together.  We like her and her husband.  We have no idea what to say to that kind of explosion of broken glass.  We mostly just duck and cover to avoid the shrapnel. 

We want to hug her and tell her we love her except she hates and loathes begin hugged and doesn't believe anyone saying they love her (with the possible exception of her husband, though I'm not sure).  She gets even more savage when she thinks people are saying things to make her feel better, whether they are true or not.  Sometimes I'm not sure she know how to feel not-miserable.  I don't know if she ever did.

When I say I am the "leader," I mean I'm the secretary.  I report back to the church, pass out the feedback surveys (when I remember), attend meetings for small group leaders, and pass info on to the small group from the church.  Our church still isn't very good at this discipleship thing, and the role of small group leader is a voluntary one that carries no authority or spiritual responsibility.

I think probably this lady needs some really good spiritual counseling, but I think it would take a miracle for her to find someone who could be effective working with her the way she is now, trapped in negative thinking and stress and incapable of letting herself be loved.  She and her husband have a close relationship with the counseling pastor and the social pastor at our church (a married couple), which is actually not a good thing because I'm pretty sure she couldn't bear being honest with those people in case it made them think less of her.

The psychologist in our group says we're in a tough spot, because we aren't treating her (and can't because that's not our relationship), so all we can do is redirect when she starts to hijack, ignore the negative outbursts as we have been--so she doesn't get attention for them--and encourage her on the super-rare occasions when she says positive things (even though that makes her prickly).  Maybe next time she explodes, we'll have to be direct and tell her that it really hurts us when she says things like that, but we love her anyway.  We may also have to ask what we can do to make her dread the meetings less or find out what it is about them that she dreads.  I'm not sure she knows how to explain it, and I'm not convinced that scrutiny wouldn't drive her away.  It's all so very fraught.

Any suggestions?

Bully for you

Once upon a time when I worked for TSA, there weren't really any supervisors.  We were all new, and we all took turns, so they could figure out who to promote later.  Whenever I was in charge of the assignments, I ended up working at the busiest counter, the one no one wanted to work at, and I always assigned Mr. Bully to work there, too.  Mr. Bully was a big man, a veteran built like a tank.  He was gruff and mean and had a chip on his shoulder, and his method of "winning" an argument was to shout the other party down. 

I didn't really like Mr. Bully.  And I hated that in order to keep his grumbling to a minimum, I always had to work the busy airline, too.  But I just couldn't let the injustice of him never having to work the busy counter pass, so I put up with it.  When he asked me why I picked on him, I told him I wasn't picking on him; I was just trying to be fair and make sure that everyone rotated the duty we didn't like, so certain people didn't always end up getting stuck with it.  He still grumbled.

It was just another brick in my "I never want to be a manager/in charge" wall.  I do not deal well with difficult people.  They require finesse and communication skills and concentration and careful handling.  These are things I lack even more since I started to deal with chronic pain and insomnia. 

And now I have a difficult person in a group I'm in charge of, and I'm afraid it's going to be Mr. Bully all over again.  I'm the one who almost always has to step in and interrupt the story I've heard several times (she doesn't want help fixing the problem; she just wants to complain about it) or steer things back to the topic we're there to discuss.  She acts very defensively a lot of the time and makes passive aggressive comments about feeling like I'm judging her.  (I'm actually not.)  I'm sort of anticipating a "Why are you picking on me?" 

Only this time, I don't really have an answer, at least not one that is calm and logical and polite and firm and non-threatening.  I just don't have the bandwidth. 

If she asks, I will probably tell her the truth, "I'm not picking on you.  I'm just trying to redirect things, so your troubles (and they are real and significant) don't take over this group of people who hate confrontation and won't stop you.  I'm technically the leader, and this is my job."  I cringe about this confrontation and the growing passive-aggressive grumblings.  I am concerned about how these perceived clashes might hurt the group.  I do not have the bandwidth for this.  I don't want to be the "leader."

Then again, it's not like this has to end in tears.  Mr. Bully turned out to be a lot more bluster than bite.  I found that out when he surprised me by being the only one who stepped in to help when I was being sexually harassed by a female co-worker.  Not the casual friends I got along with, not the nice older ladies, but the bully I thought hated and resented me.  There's a lesson in there, I think.  I'm just not sure what it is . . .

Any suggestions?

What to do when you find out

Someone in my small group was talking about how he's not sure what to do when he finds out about the brokenness in other people that he's never encountered before.  He's a sunny soul, and he's a bit slammed upside the head when he discovers others have had so many clouds and so much bad weather, and the things he says can hurt them without him even knowing it.  And that this is considered insensitive and makes other people angry, as if they can realistically expect everyone else to know all about all their triggers and never accidentally press them.  What is he supposed to do, never open his mouth because anything he says can and will be used against him by the other people he is trying to interact with?  This could paralyze him, but he is a sunny soul, so he just kind of keeps going.  Not a bad plan, actually.  Sometimes that sun is what attracts the souls covered in freezing rain.  And sometimes it's not.

A friend of an old classmate recently posted this piece about what Christians should know about interacting with those who have suffered from "religious abuse".  At its heart, it is really a kind (but angry) explanation of how what Christians often say (usually knee-jerk statements usually unfiltered by a fully thinking brain) can be disrespectful and hurtful to those who've been injured by religion in the past.  Know these things, don't be that person, respect me and my negative experiences by engaging me with your whole being, not just your Christianese platitudes meant to dismiss me or make it all better: that's what this piece is about.

I'm glad I had the chance to read this article.  It brings up a lot of questions.  I'm curious about the working definition of psychological religious abuse, in particular, because the line between abuse and growing up in a family that had religious beliefs you didn't agree with and now repudiate is really blurry to me.  What is abusive and what is merely insensitivity or well-meaning religious dedication?  (These questions interest me because I've been reading so many other articles in the past few years about how parents should stop stressing about ruining their kids and just do their best to love them.)

I guess this article doesn't change the answer I would give this person in my small group or the way I live: know that this is true and others are broken and jagged in ways you don't know, and go on, trying always to understand, to think before speaking, and to speak thoughtfully in love.  I prefer avoiding people anyway, so I don't talk to them much, and I tend to just keep my mouth shut around people I don't know (leaving the awkward foot-in-mouth times to happen around those I'm more familiar with), but for those who like to interact with people, your chances of offending them by being ignorant are higher.  Be conscious of body language, ask for clarification, ask for forgiveness, learn from each mistake. Just keep going and loving people, even when you inevitably hurt them.  And pray for them.  (Just don't tell them about it because that's a communication stopper. :)  And pray for you, too, that God will help you be sensitive and fully engaged with each person you encounter, that He will give you wisdom.

How do you cope with the fact of other people's hidden triggers?  How do you live knowing that your edges can cut other people without you knowing it?

Church as body

church as body
broken

wholeness waits

on the other side of

destruction, redemption,

resurrection

Not a new idea, but I find myself really understanding it in a very personal way lately.  Body as one unit made up of many parts, sometimes all doing their own thing.

• I can't stretch my hamstrings because my joints are too loose, so to go far enough to get a stretch, I have to strain the tear in my hip, which hurts.  
• I need to loosen the overworked muscles in my leg that have been kindly keeping my hip in place despite the tear, but to stretch them, I strain the hip tear, which makes the muscles tighter and angrier in the end.  
• I need to strengthen my upper body to help stabilize the tear in my shoulder, but when I do yoga, core work, or anything beneficial to my upper body, the injuries in my wrist, elbow, and shoulders protest vociferously.

and so I seek
equilibrium of some kind
strengthening without
damaging pain because
movement without pain
may not be possible.

Perhaps this is why the church seems wearily familiar to me when I see it as conflicting ideas and opinions clashing against each other, accomplishing nothing worthwhile, a noisy gong and clanging cymbals, a sound and fury signifying nothing.

When I started writing this piece, I was thinking it would end more positively, like,
our bodies are broken like this,
and the church is called the Body of Christ,
so of course it will be broken like this, too,
so it should be familiar, and I can't blame it for being what it is, right?

But I can't fix my body and haven't really had much luck improving the overall health of the Body, and I
am tired of being broken
in a broken world
surrounded only
by broken people
just like me.  Familiarity
breeds, well, you know
how the saying goes (and that it's not positive).

The thing that gives me hope is that I haven't given up on either body.  Sometimes I just get discouraged when I am forced to face that fact that I cannot make either body healthy, perfect, and pain free.  And sometimes my individual body is so loud, I have no coping to spare for the bigger Body.  Avoidance can be a reasonable strategy.  At times like these, I'm glad for my small group. They are
my tiny connection
to the Body, the place
where I can use my gifts
(even if imperfectly) to bless
others and be blessed.  A smaller group of broken people, a manageable number to care too much for.  And for now, that will have to be enough.

Losing a friend

It was at the beginning of a comment, the offhanded phrase that left me stunned at its unexpectedness from that quarter: I don't believe in God any more.  I was off balance all day, literally; I kept catching myself on walls and desk corners.  Whenever there was a quiet moment, I was melancholy, more deeply saddened than I would have thought, at this loss.  We will remain casual friends who knew each other better once, but something is different now, like a missing tooth.

I asked what led her to that decision, and the answer was reason.  She found herself with some new premises and realized that if she believed them, logically she couldn't believe in God.  This seemed weird to me because it's not really how I'm set up, but when I thought about it in relation to her, to how she operates, it made sense.  She has always been a person of fact over emotion and logic over experience.  It makes sense that thinking logically led her away from the God of the Old Testament who surely seems a being of emotions (many of them negative).

I am reading Ezekiel right now, and there are definitely times where I feel the cultural gulf and the discomfort of an alien way of thinking.  I read certain passages and think, well, this part probably really offends this group of people.  I wonder, how do I reconcile this?  Then I go to bed and pray for people. 

Perhaps this means I am an intellectual coward, someone too afraid to dig in mentally because I think my faith will be lost on the path of reason.  Perhaps it means something else entirely.  Perhaps it means that I am able to see the Old Testament as story told by man about God in a different way than she does.  Perhaps it means I can divorce what the New Testament God says from what He says in the Old Testament (which took place in very different times).  Perhaps I don't really know what it means but am glad for it anyway.

I find myself wondering what she thinks of the God of the New Testament.  I understand how people read these two collections and think there must be two different beings involved because the one in the Old Testament doesn't seem much like the one in the New Testament at all.  In the New Testament, He is embodied, walking among us, teaching different things about how we are to live our lives, and then there are letters from those who knew Him and/or those who followed his teachings.  And then there's Revelation (equally as mind-blowing as Ezekiel).

Anyway, I found myself thinking about how we refer to people who no longer believe in God.  They have "strayed from the path" or "lost their faith."  At first I thought I didn't like these phrases; they are Christian cliches, almost devoid of meaning.  A former classmate of mine has refused to ditch Christian cliches as worthless and has chosen instead to study them and remake them into meaningful communication again, to find and redeem them.  In the interest of following her example, I decided to do the same, and I realized that even though people usually say these cliches as an end (as if once you are lost or strayed, you are as good as dead), I think they really could be seen and used as hopeful.  If they have been on the path, there is a possibility they could find their ways back; if they are lost, they can be found. 

I pray it may be so.

Being the grownup (in my own special way)

I am really trying to be an adult about this, but it's hard.  In my small group from church, we got on the topic of how I am really not a people person but how I seem to be constantly be involved in things that help other people connect.  I am overcompensating, in a way.  I lack something that most people have, and I've read enough and known enough people to recognize this.  As the dispassionate outsider, maybe I'm somehow better equipped to help other people connect?  I don't know. 

Anyway, the group members all did the sharing-not-so-secret-grins-and-eye-contact that says, "Ha ha, you say this, but you are exaggerating, and we know the real you really like people and are just shy."  They dismiss all my hard work in fighting my nature pretty much every second I am around them (and everybody else).  It is reeeeeeallllly annoying.  And it makes me want to do nothing more than what I really want to do: withdraw and be blessedly alone, no matter who I have to hurt in the process.  Ignore invitations, blow people off to hibernate as much as possible, read when I want to, not have to be with people.

I mean, I really don't want to waste time on all these things that I do because they are good things to do.  I do them because they help others and show my commitment to to follow Christ and love the people He puts around me because He asks me to love them, which I can only do through my choice of will and my actions of denying myself and my desires.  And people basically thinking it's a big joke that I say this is such hard work make me want to throw in the towel.

But, you know?  That would be really childish and immature.  I am not, ultimately, doing this for their approval.  I have higher reasons.  So even though giving in sounds glorious (I cannot tell you how wonderful it sounds or how much I want it), I will keep going to meet with them and will try my best to ignore their knowing smirks that don't, in fact, know anything because I know who I am, and God knows my heart, and that's really all that matters.

Give your friends a chance

An acquaintance recently informed us that she has suffered with depression and OCD for a couple of decades.  She was so nervous, it hurt to watch her.  I wondered whether she would start unraveling the blanket if she ran out of tissues to shred.  She made eye contact in stuttering dashes.

Oh, I thought, some things make sense now.  And then I thought, Why is she acting like she's coming out to a hostile audience?  She knows two others in the group have wrestled with depression (and still do).  Why is this so hard for her to "admit"?

As she told us she'd been kind of suicidal, I said a little prayer of thanks to God that I had been too typically procrastinatory to actually write that email I had been thinking about sending because I thought maybe she was just doing what my other friends who just wanted to move on had done because they were too cowardly to just say it to my face and break things off cleanly and openly.  Don't leave us hanging and wondering if you're going to come this week or ever again, I would have said in a more polite way because I was afraid she was just dithering in a passive aggressive way and afraid of hurting our feelings with the truth.  It's a very good thing I didn't send that email, which would have kindly assured her that if she didn't want to be part of the group anymore, she could just tell me, and I would tell everyone else and no one would hold it against her. 

Because that would really not have been a good thing for her to hear while she was trapped in negative thoughts, withdrawing from us all, as she told us she has done to many friends, because she didn't want to inflict herself on us, especially not when she was like that. 

I thought of a couple of my friends who pulled away in this way for some of these reasons because they were depressed.  Were they, like her, afraid of finding their friends really weren't that good of friends? That their friends would slowly drift away, always having a good excuse, not saying anything, not returning calls until no one called anymore?  Did they, afraid of finding out that truth, take the yoke upon themselves and wrap themselves in silence because forcing everyone away and leaving them seemed preferable to being left by them?  Probably.

My heart hurts.

How do I tell her that I am honored that she told us these things, yet that I beg her to please oh please give those friends a chance.  Because while it's true that some of them--even most of them and maybe all of them--will leave, some might stay, and she owes it to herself and those friends to uncover this truth?

"I was writing to figure it out, writing to get through it, writing because I couldn’t remember how to pray." - Addie Zierman

My heart hurts.  And all I can pray is, "Please, God . . ."

Can we just drop the F-bomb?

Why do some Christians choose to be so easily offended when they know they live in a fallen world full of sin and are part of a family made up of believers who are all sinful people?  I re-shared something on Facebook the other day.  It was pretty funny for the video game-knowledgeable, general nerd crowd.  Apparently, the group that posted it had the F-word in its name.  Someone I am "Friends" with on Facebook freaked out about that and sent me a text at 5 in the morning and also sent an email freaking out about it and telling how offensive it was that this word existed on my Timeline.  I took a couple of days to respond because I couldn't trust myself not to be a jerk about it. 

It brought back to mind this pre-occupation with appearances many Christians have.  Don't smoke, don't drink at all, don't swear, don't show how you really feel, don't hang out with folks who do these things because that makes you guilty by association.  I guess they wouldn't approve of Jesus since he was referred to as a friend of sinners because he had a reputation for hanging out with people the religious elite considered bad.

Keep up appearances; stay in these lines, and you are one of us.  That is not the law of Christ/the law of love.  It's kind of the opposite, really.  Then there's the whole Don't Cause a Brother to Stumble and the way we really blow that one out of context . . .  Can we really just drop this preoccupation with being offended by real life happening around us?  Or is that a dangerous line of apathy to cross?

To be honest, I was irked mostly because these are tough issues, and I don't really want to deal with them right now.  Again.  Especially when I'm not really at my best.  (See next paragraph.)

I'm in increasing pain and in a corresponding increasingly bad mood.  I'm glad I took the time to respond in a way that didn't dump my general frustrations on this person, but I'm also disappointed at this reminder that sometimes we're so busy judging others about useless things that we can seem really tedious and not the loving, thoughtful people we're commanded to be.  I can't possibly have this conversation with this person right now because I'm too easily riled up when I've had so little sleep and so much pain.

When I'm this hurt and likely to lash out, maybe I should just avoid all social media altogether.  My poor judgment seems likely to be less exhausting and less offensive to people's delicate sensibilities.  Like I said, I'm not a nice person to be around right now.

The whole situation made me more tired.  I forget sometimes that some Christians: 

• live in enclaves of evangelical Christians and only have social contact with other believers. (Some statistics indicate that most new Christians have no more non-Christian friends within 2 years of getting saved.)
• don't hear this word every day through the walls of their old, cheap apartment building. 
• are bothered enough by this word that they will take action on behalf of the other people it might possibly offend.
• are not mostly numb to it after spending time abroad. 
• have no friends who say it. (This can mean all sorts of things.)
• are sheltered and safe enough that they care more about a bad word forwarded peripherally on Facebook than a million other things they could and should be more concerned about as Christians.

On another note, Facebook says, "[TMIA] likes To Cause a Brother to Stumble" because I liked Addie's excellent post on this phrase.  Oh, Facebook, you little troublemaker.  What did I ever do to you?

Words I Can't Say

"It makes me feel good to know you like my company."  A friend of mine said this to me, and it made me respect him even more.  Which he would totally know if he could read my mind but likely will never know because it seems like I can't say things like that out loud.

"I'm really glad to have you as a friend."  He just says these things.  Can you believe it?

I can't claim he does so without embarrassment, but it's all the more admirable because he is obviously embarrassed, but he thinks it is important for him to tell me these things.  And then I sit there not making eye contact like a chump, feeling strangely glad that I think he can tell I am okay with his company even if I am apparently incapable of saying so.  And also glad that he likes my company, as I am, on the whole, less likeable company than most.  : ) 

Not that, apparently, I can say this to his face.  I hope he understands that, me being who I am, that fact that I hang out with him means the things I don't say.  Or maybe he can read it here where I can write things I can't say.

Some things need to be said.  Often those things are the ones I can't say.  Why is it so hard for me to say these kinds of things?  Why do I never think to say them first?

Apparently, my brain believes it is important that I say things first sometimes.  If I say, "I feel the same way" or "Me, too," in response, I feel like that's cheap and insincere, like it doesn't count if I don't say it first, or something.  (Count for what, I don't know.)

It's been this way since I was a child and could never seem to be the first one to thank my dad for taking me out for free pizza I earned reading books.  I would sit in the car reminding myself to remember to say it, but then we'd go inside, and the food would come, and I would be eating it, and my sister would always say, "Thank you," first, and I would feel I had lost.  (At what, I don't know.  But it seems like this is related to my current hangup.)

Are there things that you find it difficult/impossible to say to others?

Do you really want to help?

"We live in society where no one lets you know anything – we all suffer in silence. And the person saying 'let me know' knows full well that you won’t – but if some kind of problem crops up in your life, they will pull that out and say 'I told you to tell me and you never did.'" - Matt comment on April 17th 2012

I have a friend who was until quite recently very pregnant with twins.  She found herself encountering all kinds of weird invasions of her personal space from people who had once been pregnant and thus felt entitled to inflict themselves on her.  She said that during her time of obvious disability, she discovered this piece of advice for those who really want to minister/help/be a blessing to those in distress/disability:

Don't assume that you know what the person/people in questions want/need just because you were in a similar situation.  Keep your "I know just how you feel"s and unasked-for advice to yourself.  If you actually want to help, ask the person how you can help.  I'm experimenting with, "What one thing can I do for you right now that would be the most helpful?"  Ask more than once.  (Also, be okay with the answer of, "Nothing right now, thanks.")

I suppose the extension of this would be to make sure you ask the people in your life what you can do for them even when they seem okay.  I suspect, as Matt says, there's a lot of suffering in silence going on, possibly related to the fact that we spend much of our time trying to pretend to the rest of the church that we are okay and fine and dandy especially when we know we are not. 

Losing slowly

I have this good friend who is male.  I allowed the friendship because he is aware that I am happily single and celibate and have no intention of pursuing a romantic relationship with him or anybody else, and he has acknowledged that and is dealing with it.  He is not similarly geared, so I know that some day he will get a girlfriend and leave me behind.  And so, every bit of time we spend together is precious because it is finite, and I know it brings us closer to an ending.

I find that, surprisingly, this does not poison our time together.  I think this is the result of some combination a better understanding of the way God lets us intersect the paths of others and an understanding of the Japanese concept of finding beauty not just in things that are impermanent but in things that are fading right now before your very eyes.

My friend said once that he hoped we would be good enough friends that his future girlfriend would be jealous, and I found that touching but probably somewhat unrealistic.  I don't do well with hostility, and it would take a very special woman not to be hostile in that situation.  I wish that he finds that kind of woman for his sake.

Not that this will happen immediately.  My friend is in school and working full time and his main hobby that might result in meeting new people is one that is not over-full with eligible young ladies.  There are a few, but he does not wish to pursue relationships with them because he has had past relationships that started in shared hobbies and ended up in him having to drop the hobbies after a breakup. 

The end is hardly looming right now, but it will come.  I will enjoy the time we have until then.

Relationships between men and women: an experiment in brotherhood

"One way the church has contributed to this problem is to make relationships between men and women only legitimate when romance/sex is a possibility. We've made freindship, or even the simple act of riding in a car, or eating a meal together seem unsafe for people who might be married/dating but not with each other.

"Posted by: Jennifer at November 10, 2011"

Interesting article, actually.  Be sure to check it out and let me know what you think.

I've talked about this before (this post comes to mind), and I thought that the book Singled Out (about the need to reinvent celibacy in the modern church) touched on it decently without really offering any ideas about how things should look, especially for people like me who aren't searching for a mate.

I'm in the early stages of what I'm calling an experiment in brotherhood, where I am cautiously becoming good friends with a male, which has resulted in many of his friends asking tiresome and typical questions, which he relates to me with a certain amount of glee.  And a certain amount of wonder because he admits that he has never had a serious relationship with an adult woman he has not, on some level, wanted to sleep with.  He related this to me late at night while we were sitting in a car (possibly after spending some time eating together in a cafe).

Our relationship apparently started no differently, and he tells me he still has to deal with tamping down expectations that rise up sometimes out of his back-brain, but he has come to terms with the fact that I will never desire him that way, and we are cautiously trying to figure out what it means to be friends in a fallen world.

He is very honest, and I find myself concluding that this kind of relationship would definitely be impossible for me to have with a man who belonged to a conservative, non-mainline Protestant denomination because there is no way he would be this honest.  Probably he would also be looking so desperately for a spouse that he would have no time to waste on cultivating a relationship with a celibate sister in Christ.  And neither of us would be able to survive the gossip for long.

Why are so many of us so fake around the people we should be the most real around?  In the church, we're all people who know we fall short, people who know we are sinners who deserve nothing but eternal punishment but have been inexplicably granted eternal life and love and so much grace.  Why, surrounded by such people, are we so likely to try so hard to hide ourselves and our sins and failures?  Why can't we have real relationships, brothers and sisters who love each other and care for each other?  Why can we only legitimately "love" our spouses deeply enough to sacrifice for them?

It's a good thing Jesus didn't care about these constraints, even if they were present in His culture.

Well, I'll be rambling about similar things again soon, no doubt.  Until then, the experiment continues.

Neither asexual nor celibate? And the Church . . .

So I'm uncomfortable with both asexual and celibate labels.  Why?

I feel more like I'm being practical than sacrificial. If you don't have to get mixed up in the morass of romantic/sexual relations, why on God's green earth would you? I think all people desire intimacy, but some of us just realize that sex doesn't have the market cornered on intimacy, and sexual relationships are not necessarily superior in the intimacy department. Unfortunately, a lot more people don't realize that, so relationships in the church are skewed from the ideal just as much (if in different ways) as those outside the church.

The church, the body of Christ, should be about real love (intimacy), but nowhere do people get as hysterical about the idea of intimate, chaste, male-female friendships as in the current church. It's unconscious and systemic. The book Singled Out picked up on it and painted kind of a beautiful picture but stopped before going nearly far enough with the analysis and suggestions. I hope the authors are working on a sequel.  (Does anyone know of any other books that explore this practical aspect further?)

The church should be the place where people are a family, one body, intimately involved with each other's lives and not so LASER-focused on spouses and children to the exclusion of any other intimate relationships.

Yeah, I said it.  It's pretty radical, I know, and it's hardly well-developed and well-thought out enough to write a book about. But when I look at what I know of the life and example of Jesus and the early church, I can't help but think that maybe it's true.

What do you think?

Requiem for Harold

We compared stories of sliding on the icy roads last week in the elevator. This week, I have to adjust to the fact that no matter how many times I leave the building in the morning, he will never be there to tell me, "Have a good day," with that huge, adorable grin, and I will never be able to say, "You, too," with varying degrees of exhaustion.

It's even harder to go downstairs to go to work knowing we'll never have that conversation again, despite all the times we've already had it. I couldn't make it to his memorial service. He died suddenly at age 65, that's all the obit says.

I haven't even had time to write a letter to his wife telling her how much I appreciated him. I haven't seen her since, which seems right to me. I never saw her without him. I hope I don't just start crying the next time I do see her. I'm sure she's tired of crying.

He was a kind man, and I will miss him.

Melodrama for the brokenhearted

I was thinking about a friend I had once.  I saw a show recently and wanted him to see it because he's the only one among that particular group of friends who can really appreciate a good melodrama.  I also thought of him because my employer is hiring people in his field, and I wondered if he was looking for a job.  I got all excited for a moment, thinking how great it would be if he moved out here.

Then I remembered.

Oh, yeah.  He fell in love with me once.  And I had to break his heart.  For some reason, he doesn't keep in touch anymore.

So that's why I can't recommend the show and why I have no idea whether he's looking for a job and why he is a stranger now. 

It doesn't seem fair that I broke his heart, and mine hurts, too.  What separates drama from melodrama?

Standing still (and loving it)

I have come to a decision.  Not a DECISION set-in-stone-here-I-stand-I-can-do-no-other, but a decision like a rest stop along the way.  I have been wearing myself out wrestling with whether my peculiar distance is a problem I should be trying to change or a gift.  For now, I am tired.  I have decided to let it be a gift for now and to be like this person. 

"Just like always, he never stops things that come, or chases things that leave."

Rather than making myself be concerned over relationships where I have to force myself to chase someone reluctant, I will let myself relax and go back to merely observing and not trying to make things "better."  It's kind of refreshing not to be irritated because I'm putting in effort I don't want to for someone who wants but does not want to be seen as wanting. 

Maybe it's okay to just be me.  It worked for years before I got paranoid about it.

I think I feel better already.

Do you know any people (other than me) who could be described with this quote (and seem happy with their lot)?