Sometimes our very faith is so weak that we need someone to brace our back. There are times we need someone else to affirm or deny what we may be seeing/feeling so we get a fresh perspective. We need to be able to hang with someone to bounce our thoughts and conversations off of. We need sustained conversations to speak to and listen to. Covid has taken that face-to-face interaction away for now and I miss it dearly.
Yes, there are texts. Yes, there are our phones. But, we miss so much gestural language, so much body language, that help refine what is being said and felt. FB, and other social medias simply give us small short bits of conversation. It does not reach the soul like true friendships and the richness of sustained interactions that linger on, sometimes for hours. It is a total love language that is undivided and authentic, free, and nonjudgmental. We so need the gifts of listening.
We need the kind of attention that is focused and shared. We need those who will listen to your fragmental thoughts and feelings so that you feel heard and, not necessarily accepted, but heard until we are finished talking. I am realizing the heavy load of loneliness that this is bringing to us all. Women, for the most healthy ones, are desperate for companionship of sisterfriends. We greatly desire meaningful relationship(s) that we can invest in. It does not matter the number, it matters the one who is most worthy and most accepting, the deepest and the most often turned to and turns you to them. It is all about knowing each other and is interested in us, and interesting to us. We need that someone, or ‘someones’, who are our sounding board, our support, our encouragement, and knows when we say “I’m fine” means I am not.
A soul friend is one who you have shared your very soul with and you sense a oneness with. It is one who has shared enough of herself that you recognize “the hero within”. A Soul friend is one who is in no rush for you to come or go and is hospitality plus. It is a friend who is honest about her own imperfections and accepts yours. This allows for authenticity in that both are encouraging and easy to be around without one being needy. Meaningful bonds are developed when both have had to walk the walk of shame and the walk of hope and prayer for each other. This gives the opportunity to carry each others’ distresses in kindness and in care knowing that the reverse would happen without pause. This is the kind of friend that has you drop everything in a moment and go on an adventure, or just drop by for coffee and, again, the reverse is true.
All of us need the courage to try again, if a friendship has been destroyed, when one of the friends completely chooses to believe something about the one that is not true and approached the other with malice rather than open communication. I have experienced such this year and I am so grateful for this friend who saw me through it and kept me from defending self against such miserable wounding that this leaves. This friend says it like it is and accepts my story and my reality as it is and will set me straight in gentle encouragement when she sees I am struggling. Bless these kinds of friends who do not give up on us even when we try to push them away out of fear.
©Carol Desjarlais 23.12.20
*** Inspired by Teresa Kogut
My friend Cathy and one of my Christmas gifts from her.
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