Friendship

A New Real Friend.

/ Margi Sang / 1 Comment

Last night I sat on a couch and said “Can we be real friends?” Real Friends. We were asked to talk about how we were living out our word of the year (I know, life just does that, takes something you thought about for like a second (or in my case about 20 minutes) and brings it up again and again until you have no choice but to say “okay, I hear you, I feel you, I’ll do what you ask…. but I already know it is going to be hard.), how this word was allowing us to release what we needed to, and diving deep where it needed to.

Yeah – real friendship with me is actually that intense.

My new friend then said “Well since we are real friends now, I’ll go there.” She opened her heart and said some real things. We talked about how it was hard, how all the pressure has wrapped us in layers that we didn’t ask for. We said, that when we get the courage to pull back those layers, we eventually get to a place that is too real, too real. We get scared. We put the layers back like we found them, and we keep on living. We keep on moving forward, a little more slumped over and little more cautious. We look over our shoulders more and we lift the weights of life, so we can carry all that we cover up. We became grown ups and brought more with us along the way than we asked for.

My new friend, Amy – she is a soul on the sleeve kind of woman. She pauses before she speaks because she wants to say what she actually wants you to hear. She talks to you from that soul and when she is listening – she is listening. I’ve been meeting with her every month for the past couple of months. We sit together in a circle with other members of our church and we talk about how to lift others up to lead well and how are souls are doing. Despite all that real stuff, we just became real friends yesterday.

I came home and knew I was supposed to return some phone calls, I knew I was supposed to reach out through some emails, I was supposed to study and do my laundry and pray. You know what I did? I went to bed. Right to bed. No stopping along the way. Surprised and not really sure how I made it in to my pajamas – right to bed. I woke up today and I haven’t stopped thinking about all the truth Amy said last night. If we aren’t going to do better, then what are we doing? I am not talking about doing better because I set up some expectations for myself, or because I had some reasonable goals that I didn’t meet, but doing better because what is the point if I don’t?

You know what makes me tired? Life. I am not talking about living in to my whole self life, I am talking about work and commuting and being on-time (and late) to meetings, conference calls and parking. I am waking up everyday and living my life. I am not waking up everyday and loving my life. I am checking the boxes and making it through. The goal is making it back to my bed so I can start over. Why am I doing that? Sounds terrible doesn’t it?

It is really important that you know that my whole life isn’t like that. I love my life. I am grateful and empowered and working on being brave. I am surround by the most amazing people and I feel loved by so many people (some of whom don’t live any where near me). I am truly blessed. Right now, today – I am tired because I am waking up and living my life – the one I created, the one I built and set parameters for, the one that is all about me and what I want. There is little purpose when I am only serving myself. I wasn’t meant to serve myself. I wasn’t made for that. I was made for more.

I am going to stop expecting myself to get up at 4:30 am and drink my coffee with the sun, I love the morning, but that is not going to happen tomorrow – I will be sleeping. I am going to drink my coffee when I get up, well after 4:30am, and it is going to taste the same. I am not going to be disappointed before I leave my bed in the morning. I going to be present and loving in the moment, be grateful in every moment. I am not going to set myself up for self-inflicted failure – I am going to remember that I have a life worth loving.

I am going to love tomorrow.

we are not the same

/ Margi Sang / Leave a comment

True. We are different.

I was so taken aback to hear this phrase: “We are not the same.” It hurt me, angered me even. I felt betrayed and confused. Then I realized – we are not the same, and that is fine. Never in my life have I thought, “I want to be the same as the people I love.” I mean, never have I thought this and meant it. I tell my friend Kelly all the time that we are the same person. (Actually, I don’t tell her. I don’t tell her because I don’t need to – she can read my mind. She actually knows what I am thinking before I think it.) We are not actually the same person, we both just happen to be really bad at texting and showing up to social events on time.

I recently received a phone call from a friend (not Kelly) about a time where we had communicated badly and she was expressing her frustrations with me around that. The details of this are not really important. What I learned about myself on the other hand has been freeing – and frustrating.

I actually did want us to be the same. I wanted our friendship to exist in a place that was far removed from reality. Where we would only laugh and cry together in our deep intentional conversations. Where we would feed each others souls in life, work, and Jesus. So when the reality of friendship came upon me I felt unprepared.

The reality is that even with our deep intentional conversations, even with Jesus – we still hurt each other sometimes. I still hurt the people I love. I am still selfish and stubborn. I am still prideful and afraid. No matter how much I love my friend, no matter how often we read our Bibles together, or talk about Jesus or all the other things that make us cry. No matter what – sometimes we still hurt each other. No matter how “time same we can be” we are in fact not the same. That is a beautiful thing. It also doesn’t change anything about our relationships with each other. It makes them just as easy and just as hard.

We are not meant to be the same. We are meant to love each other and care for each other. We are meant to help each other love more like Jesus and grow more in Jesus. Maybe we can only do these things because we are not the same.

Originally, this post was all about this one specific experience that took place, about how it made me feel and what I learned about it. Then I realized that didn’t matter. I mean, what I learned mattered, but the other details were transferrable. What matters is not that we both apologize differently and process differently but that I need to listen more.

After our conversation I wrote down the following things.

“I have had a few hours now to think about this and I have come to the following realization about myself.

  1. I need to process.
  2. I ask too many questions.
  3. I didn’t respond well to the unexpected, but honest feedback
  4. I hate talking on the phone.
  5. I didn’t listen enough before speaking

I think this is okay. Well, I need to work on number two, three and five. My friend really wanted me to just say I am sorry. Just say it. She even said that. I respect that, but I also want her to accept that I can’t. I can’t just say I am sorry with the same passion that she can to “just say it.” I don’t think this diminishes my apology, or my respect for her or our friendship. I just think it is my way. Just like saying sorry quickly is hers.

I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t mention this one other thing: there was a moment after our conversation when I didn’t trust her apology. After I had processed my own needs and wants, I couldn’t help but think that maybe her sorry wasn’t as genuine because she didn’t think about it. I thought, “well, maybe she just says the word to get over the issue.” Then I made myself forget all of it. Why? Well, if I am asking her to acknowledge that I need something very different from her, then I need to do the same. I need to acknowledge and accept that our methods of apology meet our own needs first.”

Ultimately, I knew where I had made some key mistakes in this experience. Mostly, number five. I didn’t listen. I wanted to fix. I wanted to be done and go back to “normal.” By not listening and trying to fix everything, I made it worse. I turned it in to something that needed to become a big thing. If I had just heard her and said “okay, thank you for sharing that with me, what can I do now?”  I think it would have existed in it’s space and we have moved forward. I didn’t use the experience as a space to learn and grow. I wasn’t selfish in this moment and I should have been. By that I mean – this was really an opportunity for me to become a better me. My dear friend was bravely allowing me to learn about myself, be a better me and I didn’t take it. I made it about our friendship and us and what we did. Really, the whole conversation she needed to have with me was about what I needed to do. She approached me after all.

She boldly cared for me enough to help me grow.