Friendship & Grief: Holding the Story Only

I've always been perplexed by how effortless female friendships are supposed to be--as portrayed in movies, books and TV shows. Friendships were never that easy for me.

As a kid, having an incredibly fun, outgoing and winning twin sister didn't help matters. One time I invited a classmate over for a sleepover. We must have been around 9 or 10 years old. By the next day, the classmate and my sister were as thick as peas in a pod, chattering away as I trailed behind them, alone. I may or may not have been crying. Wow, this is a horrible story. Moving on.

Things certainly haven't always been as bleak in the friendship department. And after I moved to LA almost four years ago, I've seen and felt my close friendships deepen and grow.

Friendship is easily one of the best things about life.

I've found that there's an element of mystery to friendship. I'm not sure I can fully explain why I have the friends that I do. [Yeah, not completely buying the genetic similarity explanation, sorry.]

There are some people you meet and everything points to the fact that you should be bff's, but you're not. You have it all: shared interests, mutual friends, the same social group, shared beliefs, a similar sense of humor and appreciation for the finer points of medieval Norse, but yet there's that certain something that's missing.

As one friend explained to me once over tea in a trendy (is there any other kind) LA coffee shop:

"There are some people that you miss when they're gone. You feel it here."--holding her hand to her heart.

That's probably the most accurate definition of friendship I've ever heard. 

And that's the thing--you don't necessarily choose this feeling. You can have it for someone you've just met or someone you've known for 15 years. You can experience it after one conversation or 20. You can have it for someone who could be your personality twin or someone whose ways and means are as mysterious as the origin story for french toast.

To recap: Friendship. Awesome. Mystery. French toast.

All that to say, I'm currently experiencing something that feels a lot like grief.

More recently, friendship has felt a lot like the memoir class I took last year, a class in which each week, several people brought in their living, breathing, gasping-for-air stories.

And Samantha reads her story out loud. And the room falls completely silent in the presence of such naked, vital vulnerability.

And I'm sitting in my seat holding the story in my cupped hands--trying to--struggling so hard not to crush it. And the air is electric and thick with beauty, loss, grief. And I'm completely still as I hear about losing a child, becoming a mother, caring for aging grandparents.

It feels sacred. This story-cradling.

And I don't know how else to describe how friendship feels sometimes.

As if I'm holding my friend's story. Awed by her beauty. Crushed by her fragility. Desperately hopeful for her future and protective of her past.

There is pain in the tension of not yet.

I have these moments. I think everyone has these moments.

All I can do is hold the story. Without altering it to make it easier to take, or trying to "fix" it, or pretending that the painful parts don't exist, or going on as if everything's okay when it isn't.

Sometimes it's just not okay. 

Three Confessions and a Funeral

My Uncle Paul died on July 3, 2014 at the age of 91.

I got an email from my dad asking me to go to the memorial service.

First confession: I didn't want to go. If I'm honest, that was my first thought.

My second thought was this:

"You're selfish."

I showed up to the memorial service. I was late and wearing heels that inappropriately CLACK, CLACK'ed their way down the aisle.

[I can't really walk in heels--even comfortable, conservative size 8W heels purchased at Payless.]

Selfish. Selfish.

I sat in a pew in Sky Rose Chapel--high vaulted ceilings, stone floors, over-cranked AC--and listened to an account of my Uncle's life narrated in Chinese. My Uncle Paul had served as pastor of South Bay Chinese Christian Church for 33 years. He became a Christian in 1950 and moved from Taiwan to the United States in 1969.

I read the bulletin.

Printed there were these lyrics in Chinese and English:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer! 

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged--take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer. 

Second confession: Shoes.

I once "borrowed" my Uncle Paul's Nike sneakers when I had no comfortable shoes to wear home and "forgot" to return them.

Selfish.

But sitting in that freezing chapel, hearing and reading about my Uncle's life--and not only that, remembering the kind of man that he was--

Gentle. Incredibly gentle. Kind. Patient.

We weren't close, but I can remember him sending me off multiple times over the years after a visit or stay at his and Aunt Mona's house, always walking me outside to the driveway and praying to God for me in Chinese.

For my protection. For my blessing. For my safety.

A father's blessing. A father's gentleness. A father's forgiveness.

I cried. I cried because I'm me and I was at a funeral.

I cried because I had carried this burden of SELFISH for a very, very long time.

I cried because I had accepted this burden from someone that I loved (and it can be so hard to refuse burdens from those that you love).

I cried because in that moment I felt the gentleness and forgiveness of a God who does not condemn me. Who knows my every weakness and forgives me.

I cried because I felt like, "Hey, God wouldn't want me to carry this burden of SELFISH and I don't think my uncle would want me to either."

I cried because God is my father. And he is gentle with me.

Third confession: I'm still struggling to lay down this burden. And that's why I'm writing this.

Why is Church Cliquey? Part 3

A couple months ago I was praying and the story of Zacchaeus came to mind. So I found the story of Zacchaeus in Luke and read it. If you haven't read it, it's extremely short. It didn't particularly resonate with me, but I was like, cool, whatever. There's a short dude who is also a hated tax collector. He climbs a tree to see Jesus. Jesus singles him out and invites himself over. They party. Zacchaeus repents of his scummy tax-collecting ways.

The next day (or soon after), I went to church. It was a Sunday morning service and I found myself weaving in and out of the people in attendance. It was bright and sunny (this is Southern California). There were couples and families and children and babies and people I knew and people I didn't.

And I did something I don't think I've ever done before.

I took a backseat in my brain and just observed what was going on in there (do NOT try this at home, kids).

It wasn't pretty.

It was dark. Judgmental. Shallow. Vile. Ugly. The worst kind of petty envy and jealousy.

And in that moment I realized: I am Zacchaeus. I am the short, ugly (?), hated tax collector and I feel so much self-loathing that I put other people down internally in order to elevate myself.

But rather than feeling only shame I felt something else--I guess you could call it pity or even compassion:

I feel more uncomfortable and unsafe and not-at-home at church than I do almost anywhere else.

That's such a strange sentence to write. And I could, if I cared to, explore the history behind that sentence--the different experiences that have led me to both love and hate church.

But right now I'm more interested in this dynamic of feeling comfortable in the discomfort, at-home in the not-at-home, safety in exclusion.

That being loved--actually loved without condition--is excruciating for me.

That being at home--not a stranger, or a guest, or a foreigner--is unthinkably painful and more than I can bear.

My church recently did one of those research surveys, conducted by an external organization that does these kinds of things, to explore our strengths and weaknesses.

The survey found that there was a significant statistical "disappointment gap" between the sense of belonging desired by the people attending and the sense of belonging experienced. I did not fill out this survey. But I can relate. 

I long for acceptance and belonging--the unconditional kind of belonging that I think most people long for. However, I attend a church where this longing goes unmet and denied. 

Just to be clear, I am not blaming the church that I attend for unconsciously or consciously (doubtful) failing to accept me or meet my needs. I'm saying I feel more comfortable living in a space of ambivalence, and so I choose to attend a church where this ambivalence grows and thrives. 

If I'm really, truly honest, I would say I feel more comfortable living in a place of rejection than of love. 

That is so painful for me to write. 

Previous posts: Why is Church Cliquey? & Why is Church Cliquey? Part 2

Next post: "Breaking up with church"