What Is Different?

A great friend moved away recently, and it gave me the opportunity to dissect our friendship a bit.

What makes someone a great friend? What do I value in a relationship?

There are the predictable qualities - honesty, loyalty, confidentiality, authenticity, among others - and a couple more that I am lately able to articulate.

One thing I realized I value greatly is the absence of pressure to have some extraordinary social experience. In this era of Facebook, many have recalibrated friendship expectations to value a great story over a real-life story. People plan the wording of their next status update even in the midst of the activity or moment they are experiencing. When we start thinking of life in terms of status updates, it might be time to take a step back from social media and just live life.

Sometimes it feels like telling others about life has become more important than living it. The pressure to write the script to impress others can be subtle and strong. I have turned many a playdate or school day or down time with my family into a photo shoot, prompting and posing everyone extensively for that artistic shot or to get everyone smiling at the camera at the same time. Since when are we people who are all smiling perfectly at the same time? What will my children remember from these moments? The perfect script I tried to write for them, or that they had fun bobbing in the surf until I made them pose for every wave until I got the right shot?

Sharing joyful moments with others is good, and the internet can be a powerful tool to that end. I feel a little hypocritical, posting this and then eagerly going to my friends' blogs, emails and Facebook pages to see how they're doing.

I'm not trying to be a wet blanket on sharing life with others. Just the opposite. I'm challenging myself and you to share life with others. The real life we live every day with successes and fears and failures and joys. What if, instead of spending so much time and energy trying to convince others what great lives we have, we spent that time and energy actually making our lives what we want them to be?

Here's the other item I realized I love about my friends: simply being together. With the friend who moved away recently, I found myself saving up topics I wanted to chat with her specifically about in between our visits. She is very wise and I value her ideas. But you know what? More often than not, when we were together, I just basked in her company. There was no pressure to fill the silence; it is actually quite enjoyable to sit with someone who fills in your unknowns with positives, and for whom you do the same.

Thanks, friends near and far, for making this life interesting and funny and truly enjoyable.

August Tanka

Once pitiable,
these simple blind eyes, aging,
confess arrogance
and see now not dearth's house
but one upright, in paradise.


(c) 2012 Laura Devaisher

Hard to Get

"When are you going to write again?"

I've heard that several times lately, and the answer is that I've been writing more than I have in a long time. My journal runneth over. The problem is, the road hasn't been feeling so lovely lately.

Let me say before I go any further: we are doing fine. God gives us what we need to get through each day, and through pain comes real growth. We are thankful for that.

There has been a lot of heavy stuff happening this summer. The kind of private, painful stuff you don't post about on blogs. Many subsequent conversations between God and me are similar to this:

"Are you kidding me, God? That's the best you can do?"
"Trust me, Laura..."
"Trust? The job you're doing? I think it's pathetic. PATHETIC."

I thank God he doesn't stoop to my level of argument. He is so patient. I would be terrible at being God. When I am honest through this answer-seeking process, I admit that part of my problem is that I DO want to tell God what to do. How arrogant. How...pathetic.

Please understand. I fear God. I know nothing happens without passing through God's hands. And frankly, sometimes that irritates me. That God knew something horrible was going to happen, could have stopped it at any moment, and chose not to is disgusting to me. And it's been happening to people we love, week after week, all summer long.

I'm not interested in anemic, answerless faith. I don't like blind faith or cheap grace. I need a logical path from point A to point B. I want God to make sense. Right now.

This summer has been a time of reflection and, in many ways, renewal.

I remember 25 years ago it was summer, and my parents were taking me to FCA leadership camp at St. Simon's Island, Georgia. They were to drop me off and continue to Florida for a rare week of vacation, then pick me up on their way back through.

We arrived at the camp, unloaded my bag and went to the registration table. Someone handed my parents a letter. I didn't think much of it. My Dad said something about needing to call home and disappeared for a few minutes. When he came back, he wasn't smiling and talked with my Mom privately for a few minutes, then they talked to me.

"Your sister has fallen down some stairs and we need to get home right away." There was also something about a possible seizure and surgery. And cancer. It was a lot to process in that busy, loud room with so much commotion.

They had already decided that I should stay at camp and spoke with the organizers about our situation and to see if anyone would be driving north after camp. Most of the leaders that week were college students at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee. They somehow, instantaneously, got the hundred or so people in that chaos into a circle, briefly explained the situation, and dropped down to the floor in prayer. Loud, crying out to God prayer I had never experienced before. I still get teary-eyed thinking about that moment so many strangers loved us.

My sister died about five years after that, after having a baby and fighting cancer. God and I tangled through the aftermath. It got messy.

I tell you all this because it has taken me much of 25 years to find a Point B in that situation. Not only to move past the point of feeling that God was somehow sick and sadistic, but to see how God was working through the midst of the pain and chaos to bring good for those who love him. I'm sure there are still lessons to be realized from that process.

Back to the present set of questions and doubts...where are the good answers? I'm going to keep talking to God, and keep waiting for answers and sense and peace for hurting hearts. I'm going to keep interceding in prayer between my friends and my God, because I saw the power of it 25 years ago and have seen it many times since.

And I'm going to be thankful that God understands me better than I understand him.