Know More, Love More

Tonight I co-hosted a table at our church’s Advent by Candlelight event - a time to focus on Jesus, the true meaning of the season.  As I looked around the table at the women – some I had just met tonight – others I have had the honor of getting to know over the last several months – I was impressed with God’s love for them moving through me. 

 

As we went through the activities of the night, we shared family traditions.  One woman’s family started asking each other “what does God want for Christmas?”  Another shared about the delicious egg strata her mother made each Christmas morning.  One spoke of her family’s traditions – originating from Eastern Europe.  The women spent hours cooking – learning the customary dishes for Christmas.  Each girl initiated into the traditions – it was “woman talk” – a place where you heard the family stories, laughed, hands full of sticky dough.  It was hard work, but significant.

I looked at each woman thinking that as I learned more about them, I had the opportunity to love them more.  When we share ourselves, our story, our true self – where we’ve come from, the depth of who we are becomes rich and beautiful.  To know more is to love more.

I believe that at times God has given me a spiritual love for people as I need it – at times suddenly and almost overwhelmingly.  But more often in life, this sharing of who we are over time is what brings me to that complex, indescribable bond.  Conversely, if a person is guarded and not willing to reveal even a glimpse of herself, I often cannot find love.  I find fault and annoyance and struggle greatly to connect.

Tonight, I looked into each face and found that supernatural love, a gift to my worn soul.  I can’t help but praise God at the gifts of community and love he has given me – something I have prayed for a long time. 

To Be Known

If you know me, you know that I’m an outgoing person.  I love to laugh and talk and drink coffee while discussing every detail of my life.  If you have known me a long time, you know that I am pretty intense – I feel joy, anger, and excitement - all in about the same minute.  What you may not know about me is that I used to be a better friend than I am today.

You see, time and experience and my own internal struggles have led me to this point where I have become a shallow, and distant friend.  If you knew me then, you would have called me the “Cruise Director” as most of my friends did then.  I was always making plans to do this and that and everyone was invited.  I would get excited about even the most minute detail and ponder the event over and over and think of all the fun that we would have.  The event would come and I expected it all to be over the top, no matter what the experience.  I love trying new things – especially new foods.  Unfortunately on more than one occasion I’ve had to say, “This is not what I expected.”

If you were my friend then, I would have called you regularly – checked in more – just to find out how you were.  There was something in me that just had to know.  I had to know what made you tick, what your experience was that day – what you had for breakfast and what color shirt seemed like a good idea and did you wear those same earrings or something new?  Did you buy the shoes?  Did you talk to her about the same old thing?  How did that book make you feel?  I thrived on the simple day-to-day of who you were. 

But then my interactions with friends were not as frequent…plans not made, kept or reciprocated…phone calls unreturned.  Things were allowed to get the in the way – work, children, and who knows what.  My striving for those friendships was dashed – unreturned, unopened, unappreciated. 

I didn’t know it, but this slow process of drawing in began.  Drawing into this darkness and cold.  I am still friendly, still outgoing, but there is this part of me deep inside that assumes that we will never become better friends than these superficial masks that we wear and that my attempts at frequent contact and a real knowing with you will not happen.  And so I try less and less.  My faux list of Facebook friends grows and yet there is this horrible lonely part of myself that longs to be known.  Known by another like me or different...or intense like me or reserved unlike me – but really exposed to who this frozen soul is. 

How do I begin again?  How do I become that intense, angry, loud, boisterous, silly, fun, unpredictable person that I was?  How do I reach out and seek to know that part of you that also longs to be known – in this sisterhood of friendship so few of us dare to become initiated into?  I don’t know right now.  But I know I need to learn to walk the edge of this cliff again – fearing that one wrong step I could fall off, but fearing a greater danger of walking so far over to the solid ground that I cannot see the breathtaking view of the edge.