Tag: friendship

You Should Say “Thank You”

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“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

My 5-year-old got a new bike from her grandmother. We intentionally got it bigger because she’s growing so fast but it means she can’t touch the ground while sitting on the seat. So the way she was starting by pushing off with her feet and stopping while sitting on the seat wasn’t working. To help her practice, I was helping her start on the sidewalk out front of our house and then running about 200 feet to the corner and helping her stop. The standard parenting job for kids learning to ride bikes. We were doing it for about a half an hour, I was dripping with sweat when on one of our runs she says over her shoulder, “You should thank me.” And I huffed out the question as I ran, “For what?” She replies “For slowing down so you could catch up.”

If I could have belly laughed while running and out of breath, I would have. But it also rang an interior bell for me – how many times in life have I felt pretty smug for what I was doing and completely missed the big picture of what God was doing?

It reminds me of the time about a year and a half ago when I invited a family I didn’t know to live with me for three months. I wrote about it in my post Power Stance. I was feeling pretty gracious for being willing to open my house when I had a newborn and 4-year-old. But yesterday as I sat talking late into the night with the mom of that family who came this weekend for a quick visit, I realized that it was completely analogous to my daughter on the bike. While I was feeling so self-satisfied, God had been working to give me a lifelong deep friendship with a kind and thoughtful woman who affirms my spiritual nature. Now there’s something I should say “thank you” for!

I assume that it’s a little like riding a bike. Once we learn to balance on two wheels and get some momentum, we gain a whole lot of confidence and freedom. But every once in a while we skid on a patch of gravel and remember to say, “thank you!”  

Making Friends in Online Kindergarten

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“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” – J. M. Barrie

When I took my daughter to her five-year-old check-up this past fall, the doctor asked how online Kindergarten was going and she answered, “It’s stressful.” And it was! In this year of virtual Kindergarten, my daughter colored on her iPad with a crayon, learned a great deal, and much to my amazement, also made friends.

I’m so grateful to Seattle’s Child Magazine for publishing my essay on making friends in online Kindergarten.

Perspective | A beautiful kindergarten friendship blossoms through a screen

Renewal Isn’t Just for Spring

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“When you are finished changing, you are finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

I was talking with a friend who is having a hiccup in a long-standing relationship she has with some friends, a couple. We were talking about what was frustrating her and how she views them and their history and it seemed clear to me as an outsider that there was a different way to see it. She decided that there were two ways she could proceed, do nothing and trust that God would help work it out or to speak up and say something, though she wasn’t quite sure what. I asked her if she felt like the relationship needed to change even if it was her that had to change, maybe just by seeing them differently? She wasn’t sure.

Which I think was a fair answer but it made me wonder, when do we say “yes” to change? I think back to long before I had kids, when I was married and was dying in a relationship with someone who needed a lot of care but gave very little back. And still, I was hanging in there until someone told me of his infidelities and it all blew up. Best thing that ever happened to me. But, why was I unwilling or unable to make a change before then even though I knew I was unhappy was largely about not wanting to break my word.

Recently I read a blog post by Rebecca that told of her experience of being laid off after more than 30 years when COVID hit. She walked through the dismay and disbelief that this happened and then she did the work to reframe it as best thing that could have happened to her. Is it loyalty that keeps us from changing before it’s foisted on us?

I assume that we aren’t in charge of the big seismic shifts that happen to us. They come along to blast us out of our ruts when we’re in too deep. So instead I’ve been working on recognizing that everything is seasonal. If I like something, perhaps the way my baby runs to me for reassurance when he hears a loud sound, that’s great but it’ll change. And if I don’t like something like how hard it is to clip the baby’s fingernails, that’s also okay because it’ll change. I look outside and watch my yard grow, bloom and shed and try to stay soft.

We can embrace renewal from within or be eroded by change from the outside. In my lifetime, both have and will continue to happen and what I’m finally realizing is that the benefit of embracing it is that it’s a lot more graceful. The flexibility that I am trying to practice on little changes helps keep me from stiffly falling over when the big changes come. Talking through this with my friend helped me see this in my experience of relationships as well. Planting that seed with her, the idea that change is always happening, helped her see it a little differently and she found the words she needed to say to be a part of where’s it’s going. That inspired me to see her differently and so the renewal grows and grows!

Vulnerability and Courage

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“I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage.” – Brene Brown

My friend sent me an email the other day that made me feel like the wind was knocked out of me. It said in essence that she was hosting Thanksgiving at her house but we weren’t invited. There are so many ways to explain this away – she didn’t mean it to be hurtful, the pandemic has made gatherings risky so to protect our older generation this is wise and so on. But the fact of middle age is that we very rarely wound each other. Our lives and patterns of communication have solidified so that no one needs to either extend themselves very far nor risk being hurt. It was such a surprise for me to feel so pierced that it threw me and my productivity off kilter for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts about vulnerability. it started with University of Houston research professor Brene Brown but now I’m finding that thread in so much of what I’m reading and listening to. That vulnerability means that we are daring to live out in the open, to try things and to fail, that if marks whether we are doing something meaningful. And by meaningful, I mean meaningful as in measured by personal growth.

So I’ve been consuming all this content about vulnerability, I know it’s one of my weaknesses and then my friend sends that email that hurts me. My first reaction was to hide, to pull back into my shell and just nurse the wound. I’m a pretty affable person and I can shake things off as unintended. But one of the reasons the email wounded me is that it feels like my friend often makes unilateral decisions without consulting me. And the second reason is because I secretly fear that I value her friendship more than she values mine. And the third is because I’ve never told her the previous two reasons.

Instead of hiding, I waited a few hours and sent an email back saying that I was wounded. I’ll be honest here – it felt yucky. Her response was lovely and though we probably won’t still get our families together for Thanksgiving as we have for every year for the past ten, it won’t stick like a turkey bone caught in my throat blocking my ability to breathe or be grateful. I continue to feel a little tender but within that tenderness is a kernel of additional belonging that I didn’t have before. I can speak my truth and still be accepted. My right to be here isn’t conditional on me behaving affably. I feel a little more wise about how to coach my kids about friendship. I crossed that chasm between learning about something and doing something and it makes me feel brave!