Accidents Happen

I, like my friend, and maybe like you, have grown up worrying about the reaction of other people to my choices. I have feared several things: disapproval, conflict, hurt feelings...but especially I have feared finding out that I might be wrong or bad. These things - wrong and bad - are kind of measurable. And the facts are in at my age - I'm not bad. I do some things poorly because I'm not Wonder Woman, but I am not bad. Most people are not bad even though many of us are afraid of being bad. Truly bad people NEVER think they are bad - so, if you worry about being bad - you can rest assured you are ok.

Now - being wrong is a different kettle of fish. We are all wrong a lot of the time. This is how we learn. My granddaughter confessed a wrongdoing recently to her Pops and me. We answered in unison, "Accidents happen." She replied, "I know you sillies." I hope we keep reminding our grandchildren in a million little ways that being wrong is human and brings opportunities that being right cannot provide.

We also want to teach them that decent humans understand that it is unreasonable to expect people to get along 100% of the time - again, a lesson I was slow arriving at. People with healthy skills are not afraid of conflict, arguments, or getting hurt. They accept these experiences as part and parcel of the human condition.

Healthy people do not need to care about or agree upon the exact same things. They care about the people they love - whether or not their views align, their hobbies mesh or they pull for the same sports teams. If different opinions causes a rift in the relationship that cannot be bridged, then the relationship may be built on the shaky foundation of the stuff Brené Brown calls, "shared enemy". More on that tomorrow.

No One is Asking You to be Right

I am my biggest limitation. It's true. I make up stories in my head about what I SHOULD do, or the kind of person I COULD be, or the life I MIGHT HAVE HAD IF ONLY.... most of it is just baloney. It turns out that everyone has limitations. Even I, with all mine, has not been powerful enough to ruin my children.

Last week we had our annual Memorial Day family gathering. The grandkids are at the stage where you can take your eyes off them for 3 seconds without them choking on a screw or choking each other. I built them a fort in the back yard made of sheets and towels thrown over a dome-like jungle gym structure that they climb on and fall off of on a regular basis. They loved their little cozy fort.

The big kids - all the rest of us, played pickle ball on a court drawn quite precisely by the resident engineer in the family. Scott and I acted as his assistants and we really did try to keep our mocking to a minimum over his precision and laser focus on getting it perfect. We ate a simple meal that included a new recipe from my sister-in-law, who we affectionately call Chef ShooFly because she is an excellent cook and one of the littles called her that years ago and it stuck. We had a discussion on labor unions (with many different perspectives at the table) and I can only speak for myself - I learned a ton.

My joy is complete - to see the way my family respected each other even with the diversity that has bloomed as the years have started to pile up and kids have turned into adults. It occurs to me that with all the things I regret about the way I parented, the thing I love about being a parent is that somewhere along the line someone managed to convey to my children that no one is asking any of us to be right or deny their limitations. No one has to be certain that their opinion should and must prevail.

I don't know who taught them these things, but I am so grateful to learn by watching them live a life of unconditional positive regard for one another. My optimism for future generations grows as I see how this next generation is modeling these truths for their children. So just in case no one has told you recently - your limitations are not a problem. Everyone has them. Tomorrow we'll talk about how to manage them.

Imagining Better Friendships

Within my own imagination I lack the capacity to be a good friend. The bible is full of friendship stories; I learn as I read this sacred text that the origins of friendship are from God. I don’t need an imagination, God showed us the way; what I need is courage. David is not necessarily the guru of relationships seeing as how he cheated on his wife, got his friend Uriah the Hittite killed to hide his infidelity and generally made a muck of it as a parent. But what we learn when we study the life of David is that no one is “one thing”. This is a vital thing to know if we strive to be a good friend.

One Sunday after service, someone texted me and said this, “Hey, in my small zoom group this morning there were folks in there that are too politically conservative for me and I find this too upsetting to keep zooming.” I replied by affirming everyone’s right to choose and expressed my honest regret that this is so hard for him. I couldn’t help but think that perhaps he, like me, suffers from a lack of imagination. Brene Brown talks about this concept of having a “shared enemy” - i.e., agreeing with each other on sensitive topics, as faux intimacy. My own imagination is so limited, that at first, like my friend, I can only envision what it is like to feel a kinship with others who think like me. God sees friendship differently. My imagination and my friendship practice expands when I consider David. For all his faults, David had an imagination for what it means to be a good friend - at least to Jonathan (not so much to Uriah the Hittite). Jonathan, son of Saul, became fast friends with David in spite of Saul’s political jealousy over David’s popularity and eventual replacement of him as king. They were loyal, took enormous risks for one another and eventually their families bound together for all time through the generations who followed them. When Jonathan died, David cried these words:

O Jonathan, in your death I am stricken, I am desolate for you, Jonathan my brother. Very dear to me you were, your love to me more wonderful than the love of a woman.

2 Samuel 1:26

Jonathan and David were political enemies and loved each other with all their hearts. I want to be that kind of friend. Now, another option remains to all of us even if we stick with David as our model. When truths became inconvenient between David and Uriah, David arranged to have Uriah killed. Snuffed out. (Picture David having to say to Uriah, “Hey dude, while you were out fighting my battles for me I got your wife knocked up.”)

So we have these choices within these biblical examples. We can distance, detach, and eliminate all the people who inconveniently make us think, doubt, wonder and even judge them or ourselves. This will provide momentarily relief. No more awkward conversations. We can find friends we bond with and agree with and all will feel better...for a while. Or, we can decide that we want to live into the kind of friendship God had in mind. You remember it, right? The kind that when we do not quite fit up to his ideals for us, he still loves us like crazy. God knows that we can be more than one thing, and he hangs in with us for all of the mess that we are and the good that we are too.