Thank you for this note on friendship. I have been given this gift of friendship a few times and some of these deep friendships stand the test of distance and time. What struck me about the description was how authentic and rich friendship sounds a lot like love. I forwarded the note to my husband, who does not usually read many of the same things I read, because it reminded me of the best of our relationship. We are in the midst of a long moment of bumpy road right now and a glance back at a thirty-one year marriage that has left us with a few painful habits and the need and desire to get it better for the next thirty years. He answered me with a hopeful email and could also see the resemblance to your description of our relationship. (I just realized that emailing spouses sounds more dire than it probably is...hahaha...we live overseas and I am back in the States for the summer. We email and talk everyday, but I admit, sometimes it is easiest to say some things in writing!). Anyway, thank you for your note-and all of your newsletters.
I'm incredibly behind on emails since Michael's surgery, so I'm binge-reading a bit this afternoon. I loved this reflection on friendship so much. Also, I'm so intrigued by your choices in beans! They sound so pretty and exotic. This is my second year planting Kentucky Wonder green beans, because that's what my grandma always grew. Last year I planted them in my very failed attempt at a 3 sisters garden in my mom's back yard, where the squirrels ate everything. This year, new house, smaller garden, but I'm making it work.
Thank you so much for your writing, and for the invitation to join you in reflection. Thank you especially for your window into turmoil after kissing a boy for the first time. It's so generous and stories like that have been really helpful for me to understand how deeply the dignity and health of LGBTQIA people are at risk when we ask them to hide. I'm working on my congregation to understand how big of a deal it is.
Friendship. It took me a long time to trust that my closest friends did really just want to be with me whether I was easy to be around or not. Really, that's not even a fair way to say it. It's not about being easy or not easy to be around. It's that your life is tied up with the life of that person, and there is nowhere you would rather be than living life with them. I remember the first time in my 20s a friend came over unannounced when I was sick and took care of me. I was so embarrassed at first but still smile and want to cry with gratitude knowing I don't have to be alone in times of need. It helps me when I remember how deeply we are restored when we can show up for each other the way Jesus shows up for us. This past Friday a group from my church went to go sing to our friend who is on hospice and unable to leave or have visitors come inside her care home. We gathered outside of her window in a side yard by the air conditioning unit and peered into her room smiling behind our masks. She wasn't able to speak but her eyes tracked us and her husband beamed as we had church right there with a wall between us. Like you say, we wanted to be with her, for this season as in any other.
Jeff: my new friend, Ken, came to me during my groups zoom call (San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center) when I mentioned my church giving up shame fir Lent. I sent him our sermon podcasts. He is gay, a lapsed Catholic interested in diving back into his faith. He and I have started a book study, First with «Torn », then we read your book « Does Jesus Really Love Me. » Now we are reading « God and the Gay Cristian » by Matthew Vines. His insights and questions have challenged me, a gay Cristian who believes God loves me as a person in a committed, active, monogamous relationship with my boyfriend. I agree that my new friendship is a gift from God. Ken has said he had an epiphany moment that God does love him after carrying the burden of shame. He got on a Catholic chat room of celibate only suffering SSA men and started more healthy, affirming conversations. His last post garnered 43 responses! He is teaching me how to love your neighbor and speak to them in love. We continue to pray for the men in this chat forum. And I am incredibly thankful for a friend who is both gay and a Christian —I have not always had especially during the COVID shutdowns. Thanks for your ministry. PS: My friend Peter knew Rachel and I will contact him about your webinar. In Christ, Stephen
Friendship is a thing I've struggled with for most of my adult life. The friendships that feel the most life-giving often turn sour, seemingly without much input from me. My maid of honor told me two weeks after my wedding that I didn't bring anything of value to her life, and ghosted me, for instance.
So I strove to make myself valuable to people. I watched their kids and made them meals and did what they wanted to do and brought them to live with us when they fell on hard times and let them steal from me, and generally subsumed myself to being useful or helpful or valuable or good. All the things Mary Oliver warns us against, right? But here I was, walking through the desert on my knees.
Even being valuable resulted in a series of losses - my three closest friends disappeared within six months in my early 20s. I rebuilt from the rubble, then moved, then rebuilt again and again and again. But I kept running into relational wreckage. Nearly everyone I have called my best friend has wound up on the other side of a Facebook block.
I was going to mention the most recent - a friend who we catsat for for years, who had a mental health emergency, moved in with us for a month, moved out, then ghosted me because I reminded her too much of former friends. I reminded her too much of former friends who I hadn't been in touch with for two years because *they* ghosted me after becoming verbally abusive towards people in my house. Taylor Swift talks about snaps from the same little breaks in your soul, and that week in January was a tough one, running up against those heartbreaks with a new iteration.
I was going to tell you about that as my most recent loss, but I forgot that just last week, I got dumped by an on-again/off-again close friend. At least she had the kindness to tell me, and to tell me why. This friend I've known since elementary school, who I would visit in her nursing home every time I traveled to my hometown is also trying to make a break with her past- a past that includes my ex-boyfriend cheating on me with her (maybe we should have just kept the off-again - all I felt that time was relief, which is unusual for me!). I can't decide if I'm the rock that good friendships run aground on or the waves that pummel a friendship into wreckage. Maybe I'm the boat? It's a bad analogy!
Thankfully, I'm in therapy, and my therapist does a great job of reminding me that it's not *me* (most of the time; I will certainly take responsibility for some of the wreckage! I have had hands in all of these relationships, of course, and it takes at least two for a friendship to exist). But goodness, I can't even count on two hands anymore the number of close friends who have abandoned a relationship with me.
And, you know, it's ok. I'm learning to live by faith that there are better friendships out there, to enjoy the fact that God is always there even if sometimes we refer to them as the Holy Ghost. It's *hard* to hold onto hope that there are better relationships out there in the future for me, but it's also been comforting that before, during and in the aftermath of the pandemic, I've been able to deepen other friendships with people that hopefully are healthier for me than the friendships that are in my rearview. I've managed to reframe friendship as a journey that for me at least, sadly usually ends, even though my heart wants friendships to be permanent, lifelong and life-giving. I wanted to be an old lady on a rocking chair with my maid of honor, or at least to get to take a girl's trip like I see people doing with their cool friends from college. But at least all of these broken friendships can all teach me along the way. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, even my friendships, even in a pandemic, even if I'm involved in my friendships.
Wow! Small world. I live in Waco and have many friends and church acquaintances that are faculty at Truitt and in School of Religion at Baylor. We love Waco but it tends to be a more conservative town in many ways. First Presby is very close to my house. I will keep at eye out for announcements of your friends arrival. If they need a friend to help them answer questions about Waco, please give them my email dkucci@gmail.com. I attend Calvary Baptist - we are a progressive Baptist church for our area :-)
Thank you for this note on friendship. I have been given this gift of friendship a few times and some of these deep friendships stand the test of distance and time. What struck me about the description was how authentic and rich friendship sounds a lot like love. I forwarded the note to my husband, who does not usually read many of the same things I read, because it reminded me of the best of our relationship. We are in the midst of a long moment of bumpy road right now and a glance back at a thirty-one year marriage that has left us with a few painful habits and the need and desire to get it better for the next thirty years. He answered me with a hopeful email and could also see the resemblance to your description of our relationship. (I just realized that emailing spouses sounds more dire than it probably is...hahaha...we live overseas and I am back in the States for the summer. We email and talk everyday, but I admit, sometimes it is easiest to say some things in writing!). Anyway, thank you for your note-and all of your newsletters.
I'm incredibly behind on emails since Michael's surgery, so I'm binge-reading a bit this afternoon. I loved this reflection on friendship so much. Also, I'm so intrigued by your choices in beans! They sound so pretty and exotic. This is my second year planting Kentucky Wonder green beans, because that's what my grandma always grew. Last year I planted them in my very failed attempt at a 3 sisters garden in my mom's back yard, where the squirrels ate everything. This year, new house, smaller garden, but I'm making it work.
Thank you so much for your writing, and for the invitation to join you in reflection. Thank you especially for your window into turmoil after kissing a boy for the first time. It's so generous and stories like that have been really helpful for me to understand how deeply the dignity and health of LGBTQIA people are at risk when we ask them to hide. I'm working on my congregation to understand how big of a deal it is.
Friendship. It took me a long time to trust that my closest friends did really just want to be with me whether I was easy to be around or not. Really, that's not even a fair way to say it. It's not about being easy or not easy to be around. It's that your life is tied up with the life of that person, and there is nowhere you would rather be than living life with them. I remember the first time in my 20s a friend came over unannounced when I was sick and took care of me. I was so embarrassed at first but still smile and want to cry with gratitude knowing I don't have to be alone in times of need. It helps me when I remember how deeply we are restored when we can show up for each other the way Jesus shows up for us. This past Friday a group from my church went to go sing to our friend who is on hospice and unable to leave or have visitors come inside her care home. We gathered outside of her window in a side yard by the air conditioning unit and peered into her room smiling behind our masks. She wasn't able to speak but her eyes tracked us and her husband beamed as we had church right there with a wall between us. Like you say, we wanted to be with her, for this season as in any other.
I love your weekly words and vulnerability. I want friends with Rachel, but wish I had been. I bought her book this week and love it! Blessings.
Jeff: my new friend, Ken, came to me during my groups zoom call (San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center) when I mentioned my church giving up shame fir Lent. I sent him our sermon podcasts. He is gay, a lapsed Catholic interested in diving back into his faith. He and I have started a book study, First with «Torn », then we read your book « Does Jesus Really Love Me. » Now we are reading « God and the Gay Cristian » by Matthew Vines. His insights and questions have challenged me, a gay Cristian who believes God loves me as a person in a committed, active, monogamous relationship with my boyfriend. I agree that my new friendship is a gift from God. Ken has said he had an epiphany moment that God does love him after carrying the burden of shame. He got on a Catholic chat room of celibate only suffering SSA men and started more healthy, affirming conversations. His last post garnered 43 responses! He is teaching me how to love your neighbor and speak to them in love. We continue to pray for the men in this chat forum. And I am incredibly thankful for a friend who is both gay and a Christian —I have not always had especially during the COVID shutdowns. Thanks for your ministry. PS: My friend Peter knew Rachel and I will contact him about your webinar. In Christ, Stephen
With some trepidation, I tried the strawberry idea! Being a good Canadian, I used maple syrup instead of brown sugar. Delicious !!!
(Now we just need more pound cake...)
Well, this was just brilliant.
I love reading your words, Jeff. Love it.
Friendship is a thing I've struggled with for most of my adult life. The friendships that feel the most life-giving often turn sour, seemingly without much input from me. My maid of honor told me two weeks after my wedding that I didn't bring anything of value to her life, and ghosted me, for instance.
So I strove to make myself valuable to people. I watched their kids and made them meals and did what they wanted to do and brought them to live with us when they fell on hard times and let them steal from me, and generally subsumed myself to being useful or helpful or valuable or good. All the things Mary Oliver warns us against, right? But here I was, walking through the desert on my knees.
Even being valuable resulted in a series of losses - my three closest friends disappeared within six months in my early 20s. I rebuilt from the rubble, then moved, then rebuilt again and again and again. But I kept running into relational wreckage. Nearly everyone I have called my best friend has wound up on the other side of a Facebook block.
I was going to mention the most recent - a friend who we catsat for for years, who had a mental health emergency, moved in with us for a month, moved out, then ghosted me because I reminded her too much of former friends. I reminded her too much of former friends who I hadn't been in touch with for two years because *they* ghosted me after becoming verbally abusive towards people in my house. Taylor Swift talks about snaps from the same little breaks in your soul, and that week in January was a tough one, running up against those heartbreaks with a new iteration.
I was going to tell you about that as my most recent loss, but I forgot that just last week, I got dumped by an on-again/off-again close friend. At least she had the kindness to tell me, and to tell me why. This friend I've known since elementary school, who I would visit in her nursing home every time I traveled to my hometown is also trying to make a break with her past- a past that includes my ex-boyfriend cheating on me with her (maybe we should have just kept the off-again - all I felt that time was relief, which is unusual for me!). I can't decide if I'm the rock that good friendships run aground on or the waves that pummel a friendship into wreckage. Maybe I'm the boat? It's a bad analogy!
Thankfully, I'm in therapy, and my therapist does a great job of reminding me that it's not *me* (most of the time; I will certainly take responsibility for some of the wreckage! I have had hands in all of these relationships, of course, and it takes at least two for a friendship to exist). But goodness, I can't even count on two hands anymore the number of close friends who have abandoned a relationship with me.
And, you know, it's ok. I'm learning to live by faith that there are better friendships out there, to enjoy the fact that God is always there even if sometimes we refer to them as the Holy Ghost. It's *hard* to hold onto hope that there are better relationships out there in the future for me, but it's also been comforting that before, during and in the aftermath of the pandemic, I've been able to deepen other friendships with people that hopefully are healthier for me than the friendships that are in my rearview. I've managed to reframe friendship as a journey that for me at least, sadly usually ends, even though my heart wants friendships to be permanent, lifelong and life-giving. I wanted to be an old lady on a rocking chair with my maid of honor, or at least to get to take a girl's trip like I see people doing with their cool friends from college. But at least all of these broken friendships can all teach me along the way. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, even my friendships, even in a pandemic, even if I'm involved in my friendships.
As always Jeff, your words are healing....
Wow! Small world. I live in Waco and have many friends and church acquaintances that are faculty at Truitt and in School of Religion at Baylor. We love Waco but it tends to be a more conservative town in many ways. First Presby is very close to my house. I will keep at eye out for announcements of your friends arrival. If they need a friend to help them answer questions about Waco, please give them my email dkucci@gmail.com. I attend Calvary Baptist - we are a progressive Baptist church for our area :-)