Pay attention in your relationships

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.

~ Proverbs 18:24 The Message

How do we develop trust in relationships? Well, for sure it is NOT being perfect. In fact, it might just be the opposite of perfection. It probably isn’t grand gestures or heroic acts - because, come on, how often is that even necessary?

But it might include: paying attention.

A while back I had an extremely stressful event happen. And my friend noticed. How do I know this? Because if her response. She was paying attention. In her attentiveness, she did a few things that were so supportive, helpful and encouraging - at a time when she herself was certainly busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

Over the course of a number of months, a number of people in our community lost people they loved. So when we gathered the week after Thanksgiving for one of our regular meetings, we took time to ask each of those people about their holiday in light of their loss. Afterwards, one of the mourners came up and said to me, “I cannot believe that you remembered.”

Due to my advancing age, I need to be honest, I am grateful I remembered too!! Paying attention to what is important helps us remember. A gracious community that takes into account memory loss certainly helps on the days when we forget.

Are you paying attention to what really matters? There are so many benefits, including a propensity to feel less self-pity, loneliness and depression. When we pay attention, we realize that we are not alone, in fact, we are usually in the company of others who are going through the exact same thing we are!

How you build relationship matters

How we cultivate relationships has wide reaching effects. My daughter is as (or more) likely to my friend when she needs help as she is me. A few of my own children’s friends have turned to me over the years when they were heartbroken or burdened with a weighty decision rather than their parents. My husband, Pete, has had a couple of “lunch and lectures” with kids who had their own parents but had spent enough time in our home that we had permission to have a crucial conversation over an issue that needed addressing.

I always felt when my children were younger that if something happened to Pete and I, my children would continue to be well loved. I hope my friends thought the same in reverse.

This does not happen in a vacuum. We do not accidentally create a village to support the nurturing and growing of the next generation. This is hard work and requires intentionality.

I think this commitment to working hard at maintaining relationships deserves our attention. It makes our lives richer; it improves the community; it makes it easier for the outcasts and the suffering to find a safe harbor. The weight of suffering can be born easier by the community than just one person.

I challenge us all to keep tending to the village. Our lives depend on it.

Trust is not the same as being like-minded

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.

~ Proverbs 18:24 The Message

Even as a child, I learned one particular non-negotiable relationship issue. It was trust. I learned that the difference between someone my grandparents were friendly with and someone for whom they counted on was predicated on trust. My grandmother was wicked smart; she watched people; she let people have the time it took to teach her whether or not she could trust them. I’m not sure if others necessarily knew which list they were on, but my grandmother was crystal clear. She could be friendly with everyone, but she trusted only those that taught her they could be trusted. She was patient; she waited for people to teach her who they were and if they could be trusted with her most vulnerable realities. For her, trust was NOT about total agreement on all subjects, it was about whether or not a person had the capacity to care and be cared for as circumstances dictated.

My grandmother maintained a certain amount of watchful but kind distance in some relationships, she even had a couple of notable compassionate endings to relationships that proved incompatible with the community she was part of. Many benefited from her quiet ability to be a good friend to others and choose her own friends wisely.

Make space for your friends' shortcomings

To review:

1. Do not impose my interpretation (and expectations) of how the world SHOULD work on others and 2. Believe folks when they teach me how they believe the world should work. If I fail to embrace either of these two practices in all my relationships, I might miss an opportunity to develop a lovely friendship with someone who at face value seems really different from me.

It is possible to adore people who voted for the candidate we did not vote for. I know - this sounds crazy - but it is true. I suspect this is a bit more challenging today than it was in the past and I wonder why. I fear it is because we have gotten careless with our relationships. Maybe we take them for granted. Perhaps our tendency toward upward mobility, or just mobility in general, has made it too easy for us to disconnect from difficult people.

My grandparents lived within a four mile (maybe less) radius their entire married life. They had relatives and lifelong friends who lived within walking distance. “Back home” was a drive out into the country, and the country was not that far from the city. I suspect their web of relationships made it harder to pout or withdraw from relationship.

It certainly made it hard to keep secrets. My grandmother was the keeper of confidences. Countless times I was shooed out the door as she welcomed a friend to her back door for a quiet, and often lengthy conversation. Rumor had it that my grandmother knew every secret in Durham but never shared one with others. I suspect this is true. She certainly held mine. I do not know if it was an expression of core values or a real sense that folks needed each other or what. But people looked out for one another, people who were very different from one another socio-economically, educationally and in other less quantifiable ways too.

True friends are your family

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.

~ Proverbs 18:24 The Message

Never, ever underestimate the value of friendship. When I was a kid, there were aspects of my growing up years that were lonely and challenging for me. I’m sure that many, many others in my shoes would have thought that our family situation was wonderful. I don’t want to communicate a lack of gratitude or misrepresent the times that were not only fun but quite adventurous. But for my particular personality, our vagabond tendency to move from city to city was stressful.

My saving grace was the time I spent at my grandparents’ home. In the summer I was allowed to go stay with them, and their block welcomed me like one of their own - particularly the Harwards who lived next door. I’ve written about them so many times, I’m sure that if you’ve hung out with me or read our blog - you feel like you know them too! These folks extended themselves for me. They went out of their way to be kind. They reminded me of who I was when all the moving often left me feeling uncertain about my own identity. They held the memory of me over the long haul.

When my mother died, they mourned with me. When their dad died, I mourned with them. Much of what I believe about hospitality, kinship, kindness, love and generosity have their roots in the deep and abiding foundation of the friendships we forged over decades. I may have been a rolling stone gathering no moss, rolling but Ruby Street was solid ground and provided a firm foundation for growing up in a loving environment.

Friendships may come and go, but we should fight to keep them if at all possible. Because a friendship can not only save a life, it can redefine it, redeem it, restore it, and even give a lonely little girl something to hold onto with joy.