Reflections

LCF’s ladies’ Sunday school is going through “Wising Up”–a Beth Moore study on Proverbs. In our last session, Beth talked about the difference between acquaintance and friend.

She said that maybe a lot of people we call friends are actually acquaintances–people we communicate with on a head to head level, but never on a heart to heart level.

Which got me thinking.

I’m a head person–I like to think, I like to discuss, I like to debate. I like ideas–and interacting with people about them.

While I have certainly coveted heart-to-heart relationships in the past, I find unrelenting heart-to-heart exhausting and unfulfilling. Give me a good head-to-head though… I rarely grow tired.

I’ve spent almost ten solid hours talking politics with a friend an acquaintance. I’ve spent hours talking medicine with others. Head to head is my forte.

The hard part is where there’s a kindred-ness of heart without a kindred-ness of mind.

Beth Moore spoke of friends as being people who you can be with without setting a “stage.” We “stage” our encounters with acquaintances by choosing to “do something” or “meet somewhere”. The stage is the movie, or the restaurant, or whatever.

But therein lies my difficulty with Moore’s system of classification. According to her, an acquaintance is someone you interact with on a head-to-head level in a staged environment, while a friend is someone you interact with on a heart-to-heart level in an unstaged environment. My experience is different. My experience has been that both head-to-head and heart-to-heart relationships require stages. It is only when head-to-head AND heart-to-heart relationships coexist that the relationship can be truly unstaged.

I have great friends (or perhaps it’s acquaintances). Either way, I truly enjoy the people I spend time around.

But I long for a connection that goes beyond the one-sided exchange I live in so often. Either we connect head to head or we connect heart to heart–and neither the twain shall meet.

I long for a dual connection–a friend that I can share my heart with, whose heart is shared with me, a friend that I can share my brain with, whose brain is shared with me. Someone I can dream with, someone I can discuss things with, someone I can do things with, someone I can do nothing with. This is the kind of friendship I desire.

Is it possible on this side of heaven? Is such a whole-person union to be found? I don’t know. But still I dream. I dream of giving my whole self to someone and receiving that someone’s whole self in return.

A romantic notion? Certainly. An impossible notion? I certainly hope not.

What do you say when you’ve got nothing to say?

What do you say when you have plenty to say but not enough time to say it in?

What do you say when you’ve got plenty to say but not enough energy to say it?

What do you say when you’re tired of starting every blog post with “I”?

What do you say when you’ve got a hundred thousand one sentence thoughts that you’d love to share–but none of them is really worth wasting the time or space to say them?

I think I’m going to just rejoice that blogging is not my life, Christ Jesus is.

According to an anecdote in Keeping a Journal by Trudi Strain Trueit, E.B. White (author of Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan) kept a journal for over 20 years, but requested that all his journals be destroyed after his death.

I can’t imagine doing such a thing–either destroying the journals or requesting that they be destroyed.

Perhaps I’m just a pack-rat, never wanting to throw anything away. I’d prefer to think that it’s the family historian and the teacher in me that wants to preserve journals.

Journals are the stories of our lives, written in our own words. They go beyond anecdotes to express our emotions, our priorities, our perceptions. Our journals show our real selves–the selves that perhaps no one has ever seen in entirety. Our journals show our growth, or our lack of growth. Our journals are little pieces of ourselves, preserved for our own reference and that of future generations.

At least that’s what I think.

My journals fill two crates. Over the past twelve or so years, I have filled at least forty notebooks with my thoughts, my feelings, my interactions. Some of my journals are fancy, with elaborate binding; others are simple wire bound notebooks with their covers long since torn off. But all of my journals contain something in common: a distilled drop of myself.

I can’t imagine destroying my journals, because my journals are a part of me. They tell the stories that have shaped my life, the hurts that have scarred me, the truth that has set me free.

I open a journal from spring of 2003 and read an account of my ongoing struggle to give God my husband. A journal from 2005 contains ideas for youth group games, for the officer position I held in my cooperative residence hall, and for a novel I was going to write (still might!) In a journal from late 2006, I wrote about discipleship, about the role of single women in the church, and about what God was speaking to me through the Word. One of last year’s journals asks why I am so restless. I quote: “Lord, why am I so restless? My journal makes it clear. A hundred thoughts whistling through my head.” That same journal contains the words to songs I sung in Mexico and reflections on Mexican religion, food, and teaching.

I rarely open one of my journals without learning something. I am reminded of the dark, dark times that God has brought me through. I am reminded of the mountain top experiences that peek/peak (how’s that for a pun?) through the valleys. I am reminded of lessons learned and battles won. I am reminded of the voice of God. I remember my goals and see how I’ve worked to accomplish them.

And a little part of me likes to think that others could learn something from these journals too. I like to think that maybe my boy struggles will someday help a girl who’s trying to put God first while desperately longing to be married. I like to think that the story of God’s faithfulness through my depression might inspire someone else to fix their eyes on Jesus–even when depression means they can’t see straight. I like to think that maybe my life, read as an open book, might be a story that could positively impact someone else’s life.

The impact of my journals might come from me re-reading, remembering, and sharing my stories verbally. I might lend them to a friend, like I did once for a friend who was going through relational difficulties. Perhaps they will be published after I die (Never let it be said that I DIDN’T have delusions of grandeur.) Or maybe they will be read by a great-granddaughter, who will be able to meet me for the first time through my hundred year old writings. But I intend for my journals to be kept, to be read, to be used.

My story is too important, too full of the grace of God, for my story to die. So is yours. So if you want your journals destroyed like E.B. White’s were, ask someone else to do it. I’m not willing that the pages of our testimonies be lost.

Or maybe I’m really glad to see that people still visit my website even when I’m not posting.

Or maybe it’s the seasonal affective disorder that the meds aren’t effectively treating.

Or maybe I’m a bit emotional because my uncle just died.

Or maybe I’m just smelling the onion left on my hands from the stew I threw together this afternoon.

Whatever the case, my eyes are a bit watery tonight.

Big things, little things, they cause my heart to swell.

Swell with thankfulness that my uncle is in heaven, worshiping freely with a whole mind (He died of brain cancer.)

Swell with sorrow as I think of his wife (my aunt), his children and grandchild, future grandchildren that will never meet him.

Swell with joy as I think of the woman who joined our Bible study tonight, a seeker, eager to experience God.

Swell with sadness as I think of her husband, raised in the church, but skeptical of the faith.

Swell with joy as I consider all the many things God, in His grace, has allowed me to accomplish today, despite the SAD.

Sigh with exhaustion as I consider all the things I have yet to accomplish in the upcoming days.

My day has been full, my heart is full, my eyes threaten to overflow.

God has been good and gracious throughout each of life’s ups and downs.