friendship

I’ve written about friendship more times than I can count. Probably because one of the greatest gifts God has given me in this life is some phenomenal women.

I have a forest of these friendships. Large old redwoods where the roots go down so deep that the tree can’t be moved. Tall pine trees that aren’t as thick and deep as their sisters but have provided incredible shade and protection during this season. New fir trees that have brought unexpected joy and diversity.

This morning, in a matter of three hours, three trees encircled me exactly how I needed. A divine gift.

My emotions have been all over the map lately. But anger isn’t one that has crowded in much. Until last night. I got crazy angry. No one saw it. The worst of it, for sure. It kept me wide awake. I knew the anger was WAY out of proportion to the thing(s) I was angry about, but it completely submerged me.

I lay there late into the night asking God, please show me the heart of this anger. Help me understand why I’m having this emotion beyond what I should. Please take this away.

While I finally drifted off, I fell asleep with no answers and woke up with it sitting on my heart like a weight.

Right before I left for radiation, I received that incredible text above. From one of the oldest trees in my forest. She and I have been prayer partners for over 15 years and have seen each other in the highs and lows. She has so faithfully prayed me through this season that I could tangibly feel it.

This morning, when I responded to her gorgeous prayer with thankfulness, I explained what had happened. She responded with this:

If that is not the most perfect response, then I don’t even know what is. I could have cried.

Then. Tree Number Two shows up. I call her wailing about this ridiculous emotional battle. First, she showed insane empathy. She could teach a class. Then she explained how it happens to her. And then she got angry for me and let me let it go. (Even though she is going through SO MUCH this week – her own big battles!)

Finally, if it wasn’t extravagant enough to have these two gifts from God, tree three waves good morning. She and I start talking and she just gives me permission to feel HOWEVER I want but then to go lay it down with the Lord. Then she says she’s coming over to pray with me. Just driving over to pray me through the ick.

And so she does. She takes me to pick up my car at the service station to boot!

Today started hard. But God is so faithful to remind me I am one tree in a forest full of trees. If I feel the wind knocking me about, my roots are intertwined with all of these other trees to keep me upright. In an article entitled, How do Trees Work Together to Help Their Communities, the author writes:

Another way trees can share is by root grafting. This is a process in which roots of different trees grow in the same area, overlap, and physically fuse together. Trees of different species are even capable of fusing their roots together and turning the combined root structures into one massive underground circulatory system. All of this is pretty remarkable and explains how trees can share vital nutrients among one another even when they seem to be spread far apart from one another.

Incredibly thankful for all of the incredible trees who share their goodness in my life. I pray I return the favor.

For our entire married life, Bray and I didn’t have couple friends, or family friends once the kids came.  We always had very different interests.  I’m more of a movies, art, theatre, travel girl.  He’s more of a tractor, rancher, hunter boy.  The back of our newlywed Thank You notes read, in small print, John Deere Republican, Urbanite Democrat, Newlyweds.

Then came triplets.  We met a few families with multiples but, as you might imagine, life with young triplets and two careers doesn’t lend itself to get-togethers.  At the time, the only commonality we had when “family” play dates did happen were multiples.

Then the kids moved to a new school this year.

The weirdest thing started happening.  We started making “family friends.”  Part of it might be the kids getting older or us engaging more. Part may have been we no longer had a nanny running back and forth to the school.  But a big part of it was God.

We started meeting the moms and dads of our kids closest friends.  Moms I adored hanging out with while the kids jumped on the trampoline.  Dads Bray could talk to for hours about hunting and fishing while frying fish for an impromptu dinner.  We were given friends inside and outside the walls of our school.  Mommas who were working long hours and still trying to make birthday parties perfect.  Dads who had lost their jobs and were casting about for what was next.  We had divorced friends and married friends. Friends with only children and friends with multiple children.  Friends who’d lived in Texas their whole life and friends who were new transplants from overseas.

Most of all, we made friends willing to open their arms and their doors.  And so we did the same.  We invited families into our messy home with carpet stains and Legos strewn about and art paperwork piled high on the bar (dude – the amount of first grade art from triplets!?!?).

I mentioned yesterday I’m part of a launch team for Lisa Jo Baker’s new book, Never Unfriended.  She writes about exactly where I found myself at the beginning of this year: For many of us women, I think our craving for connection is in direct conflict with our obsession with perfection… That standard of entertaining means that we’ll be too busy cleaning and prepping to remember that friendship works best when we show up just the way we are… Because friendship shouldn’t equal entertaining. It starts with our willingness to open the door whether we’re prepared or not… Friendship teaches us that perfect is rarely as interesting and never as satisfying as real.  Never Unfriended, Chapter 8.

I began craving connection more than perfection.  I needed more in real life friends for our whole family.  People who made all five of us feel welcome.

So…we found families.  We invite each other over.  We make plans but we also just show up sometimes.  Whether it’s us having folks over for dinner and play dates or them hosting acting classes and end of season parties.  Most of the time, it’s messy.  Our lives are busy and messy and, so far, we’re all being pretty honest about that.  But it feels like I have a local tribe now.  Men and women and kids who are all doing life together.

As a blogger, I’ve had this extended tribe of women around the country for sometime.  But I’d prayed for families we could do life with.  Ones who wanted to raise their kids with some of the same basic values so we felt comfortable swapping each other’s littles after school or meeting up for pizza on Saturday nights.

Lisa Jo says, “Maybe the most intimate radical thing we can do for our friends is to show up.”

That can be hard to do these days.

We are all so busy.  And your kid is in karate and mine is in gymnastics and you have baseball tonight and I’ve got the spring musical this weekend.  You’re out-of-town for work and my husband is gone this weekend.

Boy, it’s hard to find time to show up.  But nothing beats it.  And I’ve learned that firsthand this year as God has gifted us with these amazing families with whom we can carve out memories.

I have all these posts bottled up about friendship from the past few weeks.  One, because I’m on a book launch team for Never Unfriended (which launches next week!), so it’s on my mind as I turn the pages.  Two, because I’m overwhelmed with gratitude by the new family friendships our family has formed at the kids new school this year.  Three, because so many friendships have been in transition.  Stages of life can mean some close friends are further away while other are closer than ever.

So I’m capturing a few of my thoughts on friendships over the next couple days.  From the gift of friendship to how we stress ourselves out over friendships.

I recently had this friendship stress experience with a dear friend.  Lisa Jo explains in her new book these fears of being hurt can come from a friendship bomb (a rupture) earlier in our life.  Then, in future relationships, we start to see bombs where they no longer exist.  She shares:

I constantly interpret someone’s feelings about a situation as their feelings about me. When a friend is frustrated about something and they share that frustration with me, I’m quick to osmosis that into a sense of frustration directed at me… Whatever the relationship baggage you’re carrying on behalf of someone else, it’s okay for you to drop it.  It’s okay for you to stop taking all the weight of someone else’s brokenness onto your own shoulders. Whether you inherited it from a parent, a sibling, or a friend. Whether it’s people-pleasing or perfectionism, whether it’s control or learned hiding or any of the devastating host of  behaviors we learn in order to protect ourselves from hurtful relationships.  Never Unfriended, Chapter 1

I’ve done this for years.  I would see someone upset and wonder if I had done something wrong.  A call would come, and I’d immediately jump to a panic about whether my job or my relationship or any number of other things was in jeopardy.  I’ve improved.  Then I saw the same reaction in a close friend.

I was struggling with a situation.  Nothing could be done about it, but my frustration and exhaustion had worn me thin and I’m sure my demeanor was less than cheery.  My friend worried, “I hope it’s nothing I’ve done.  I hope I’m not bothering you…” I can assure you, she’s awesome.  My stress came from another set of circumstances entirely.  The situation was less than ideal, but there was no reason for my friend to take responsibility.  Even later in the week, she checked to make sure our friendship was in tact.

This is often what we do in relationships.  I’m sure you’ve seen it play out if you’re married too.  My husband will have a bad day, and I’ll wonder if I did something that upset him.  His state of mind will be entirely unrelated to me, but I will worry nonetheless.  The great thing about marriage is that, typically, the man isn’t sitting around worried if our state of mind is caused by his behavior (even if he should be!).  But with female relationships, each with their own past friendship baggage, we can worry ourselves sick.

We all mess up.  We’ve all hurt friends.  Some of those friendships have made it, after talking and forgiveness, and some have fallen away.

We ask for forgiveness.  We grant it.  And we move forward.  Not taking on every friend’s emotions as our own personal responsibility.  I love my friends.  I hurt when they hurt.  When friends struggle, I cry and pray, and when friends rejoice, I celebrate and turn up the music.  But I’m learning, I can’t take responsibility for their emotional state and I have to make sure they know they are not responsible for mine.

One of the biggest gifts God has given me, which I’ll share more about tomorrow, is amazing friends.  I do not, at this stage of my life, take any one of them for granted.  With our busy jobs and families and activities, friendships are a precious commodity.  They can be hard to preserve.  We have to guard each other like treasure.  We also have to give ourselves, and our friends, the freedom of letting go of the baggage of friendships-past so they don’t bomb our current relationships.

After that, we just have to find more time for each other!