ethoughts weekly- Issue 145

Jan 20, 2007

SOME NOTES:

Thanks to my fantastic husband, my website, wit4life.com has been revamped. A new testimonials page, book blog link, and an AUDIO excerpt of my book are all on there now. It's hard to endure listening to myself speaking, (if feels so odd to do it,) so I haven't listen to the whole thing since it's been uploaded, but the Introduction and the 1st Chapter of my book "I Love You, (in Theory): The Misadventure of Christian Grace" are there for your listening pleasure. enjoy. (It runs about 23 min, just to warn you. Maybe you'll just want to hear a sound bite, firstly.) Feel free to let others know of this fabulous audio incentive. I'm in a "drum up interest phase", and honestly, I'd LOVE your help. You can tell two friends, and they can tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

Also Chip MacGreor is now shopping my book to publishers, so this is great news, and airing in February, you can hear my interview about the book on the podcast show, "God, Life, and My Dog Jack" at wiredparish.com.

The following ethoughts installment is a trimmed and tweaked version of an article accept by The Ooze for publication FEB 15.

Have a wonderful coming week. Your support and love is felt and appreciated!

-L

Two Stages Before Reality

Every relationship, as it deepens seems to take a certain kind of journey, at least it does for me. I think about things deeply like this, which as it turns out, is both a blessing and a curse. Budding friendships seem to start out with a shared interest, or activity. Other times we click with someone as we apprehend common traits, preferences, viewpoints, backgrounds, or personalities. Either way, there is a starting point. It’s sort of the “check you out phase”, if you will. For me, like it or not, my default setting is to size up the person, not to contemplate if I will love them or not; because I know God wants me to love them. But, it’s the period where I determine if I will let them accept me, I guess. Will they have the qualities that make them optimal for real relational intimacy? Will they try to hurt me? Will that think I’m worth their time? Will we help each other or not? Will it be okay to let them in through my series of emotional defenses? A battery of concentric circles to my heart’s core, of walls, moats, and fences, with tiny doors.

To be kinder to myself, I should say, to plenty of folks, I’m not perceived as a closed off of a person, and for good reason. I have gotten more private as I’ve become a writer though, because I’ve gotten into the practice of sharing quite a lot, with a lot of people, (hundreds regularly, and sometimes thousands,) which isn’t really normal. It's like strolling naked. If you are uneasy doing it in the first place, it's hard to get used to. I truly need, an inner circle of the most ardent kind of supporters, who lift me up and love me, with all my flaws. I need a protective squad to guard me, too, because I feel more emotionally exposed now, more than ever. It feels like being set up for a fall, and like everybody else, I don’t want to fall. Even friends can try to knock you down sometimes, or it feels like that as you're walking around proverbially naked and they say, "Hey look, you do this awful thing," and so on. (I'm not claiming this has ever happened, I'm just using dramatic appeal.) Nevertheless, almost everybody knows me to be friendly and open. I have loads of friends. I make them very easily, and plenty of people have said to me, “You’re so real, open, and easy to talk to,” or “Even though we just met, I feel like I’ve known you for such a long time.” Of course, some people who say this, may not really know me at all. It’s also possible the people who don’t like me, or think I am hard to talk to, keep that to themselves. (I won’t act like I’m God’s gift to relationships and “community”. Duh.) So, we all work through this phase in friendship, in our own way, until we get to the next phase.

The second phase after the “check you out” phase, as a friendship deepens, is the magical and illusory, “infatuation phase”, right? This is the phase shortly after you surmise, on some level, that becoming deeper friends is in both your best interests. You realize you like the person, and they like you, and things will be good. This is sort of a shallow part of the friendship still, but you sort of move to “buddy” status. It’s full of excitement. It’s full of wonder. You feel so cool. You might hang out more, and get to know each other’s backgrounds better, identify common interests. And things go swimmingly, if for nothing else than maybe you both are on your best behavior, for the most part. You want them to continue liking you, and you basically try to be as accommodating, and pleasurable to be around as possible. It’s the real you, but it’s the best part of the real you. I should just speak for my self here. There are phonies out there too. For me, at this point, there’s purposeful goodness, appreciation, and budding care for one another. From here things can take a bad turn, to put it mildly.

My friend Jim Palmer wrote a great article for The Ooze about people and superficiality called “Jaded”. (theooze.com) I took it like this: At church, (or other meeting places,) we get to know people in a meeting setting, and then, most times, we just go home, and back to regular life. We don’t “do life together.” The problem is when we do “do life together,” it turns out people are actually kind of a big pain in the rear.

I’ll call it a do-do, doo-doo situation. People are rife with problems, imperfections, insecurities and un-wholeness. If you look for long, you’ll always find stuff, even from the people with good looks, talents, kindness, and those raised in stable homes. They have baggage and sometimes, truck-loads of neurosis. It tempts people like Jim, and, okay, people like me, to stay secluded and keep things more superficial because it’s so much simpler that way. It’s not such a mess. But, that begins an inner conflict, really. We aren’t supposed to be separate from each other. We are to be communing in community. It’s not just us twisted writer-types who struggle with this issue. We all weigh our options. We all feel helpless, or bewildered, to encounter big emotional or psychological predicaments. Like Jim, we’re enticed to just have virtual relationships where everyone thinks we’re fabulous, and we are really aren’t the wiser about them either. I think, it’s really “being friendly,” but it’s not really being friends.

As we get to be true friends, we start to know each other. Let me tell you, no one is normal. I think that word, with regards to human mammals, is purely theoretical. The next phase of a deepening friendship is the “reality phase”. It’s when you realize the friend you have, has troubles. They have a terrible temper, or jealousy issues. They are way too sensitive, or inconsiderate, or gossip, or get annoyed at trivial things. They are fine face-to-face, but behind the wheel, they have a vicious potty mouth, or they cheat on their taxes. Or they have the worst problem of all– they see you as having problems. Which, of course, seems impossible, and awfully irritating. That “familiarity breeds contempt” maxim starts to make perfect sense. You become disenchanted or confused, at least a bit. The relationship grows slightly, or terribly, more frustrating, but increasingly complicated for sure. The illusion of the perfect friendship begins to die, or become real, which in this world, to me, is the same thing. The dream is dying, but like a seed dies and births new life, the dream of idealized friendship expires, and may give birth to a flesh and blood relationship. And then you have a choice to make.

You have to decide if you want to be gracious or selfish. That is harder than it sounds, and most of us don’t even realize that it is this particular choice at stake. Many of us go for it. We try to work with what we’ve got. Some of us, who have greater issues of mistrust, or have been wounded, well, we get scared. Some of us, at this point, sort of, run off. I won’t say I do that, no of course not! How silly. But, I will say, I need to go shopping for a new pair of sneakers. The soles seem to be far more worn than I thought, for some reason. Or, if we don't really run, some of us, at this point in the friendship, disconnect a bit. It can be quite subtle. The other person might not notice it, but we know what we’re doing. I should say, I can tell I am, when I do. It’s a built in safety feature. It doesn’t give us any practice at being gracious to do this, but it makes us feel better for a while.

It makes us feel better until we realize what we’ve given up. We’ve forfeited something that the core of our heart desires so badly. We yearn deep from that place to be known and loved. We hunger to experience grace. We’ve given it up because we don’t think it’ll work out right. We’ll be disappointed. We’ll get hurt, again. Things will go badly. So we get stuck.

The “reality phase” is a real bummer. There I said it. But, there's chance, I think, if we push through it suitably, and determine to learn something, we can end up better than when we started. We can have deep friendships so long as we can regularly negotiate a gracious environment. If we are intentional about it, stuff will go so much better. I said better, not more simply.

And, I want to add, beyond our close friends, I believe, we can have a couple “core people” that we let in even closer. I don’t think these “core people” should just be anybody. I think, they should be small in quantity, fairly mature people, mostly kindhearted, and worthy of our trust, but we can’t think they’ll be perfect either. Nobody will be that.

Sometimes we hope for pre-packaged good times, and people who are easy to love and know. We want the perfectly healthy friend. The friend that is always there, and always kind, and always supportive. Just like the person you barely know is. The people we don’t know make the best friends, right?

This of course is a lie. A person who barely knows you is an acquaintance. They make only a certain kind of friend. They can be helpful, and nurturing; but a friend, is someone who knows all about your crap, and is still okay with you. They’ve already stamped you as worthy, and that translates as love in action. They accept you, look out for you, encourage you, and make you better as they speak truth into your life. They help course correct you in a very loving way, not to get you back, or hurt you, like they’re throwing up on you, but in love, to make you a better person. They are selfless like that. And if you don’t change when and how they want you to, they still accept and love you. And you, being a person who is their real friend, in the "reality phase", do the same. Very messy, actually. I cleaned it up a lot, whittled it down to the best parts, to describe it here; but that's real friendship, with the blood, sweat, saline, and mud all wiped off.

An acquaintance doesn’t need to operate in an environment of grace. Grace is medicine for more desperate times. Grace steps in when illusion and superficiality end. It’s the thing we need most in the “reality phases” of our lives. Grace defined as unearned favor, is really what deep friendships are all about. They run on this fuel, or they run out of fuel completely.

On the surface, superficiality seems like the way to go, (You like that word smithing? wow yeah.) but the path ends up being very lonely and empty. Selfishness is a closed system, like fermentation. Fairly soon, you poison yourself. You can’t get out of your own head. You need the oxygen of other people to breath again, and live again. The oxygen of grace, which is always messy grace. Grace needs to move back and forth, in, between, and through people, to rejuvenate our lives.

Be okay getting messy. Decide to be ready to handle the “problem” of grace in your life. Because, that problem, I believe, leads to life. Anything else turns into a path away from that. With people and in friendship, you are either one or two stages from reality.

Love to you all. Pass it on.

-Lisa

Lisa DeLay

©2006