Layers...

I was watching the movie Bride Wars last night, starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. Basically a story about two best friends who had been best of friends for about 20 years and had both dreamt and planned their wedding days together since they were just little girls. So they grow up and both get engaged around the same time and manage to book their dream venue and date, until the wedding planners assistant books their wedding for the same day??? EEK! As every girl reading this gasps at the thought. Needles to say all war breaks loose and what was once a beautiful friendship turns into a broken and messy one. Yet as most of these Hollywood Rom Com movies turn out, they sort things out and in the end manage to be there for one another as they had dreamt all their lives.

The movie ended and as involuntary tears poured down my face, because I'm a hopeless hopeful and just love happy endings and relationships working out, it dawned on me that I had once held this dream too, but our story won't turn out the way it did for these two friends. Losing this friendship has been one of the hardest journeys I have ever had to walk out in my life relationally to date. Although the friendship came to an end a WHILE ago, there are times the pain of that reality hits home like a ton of bricks to my heart, causing me to catch my breath and feel the warmth of the sting of hot tears streaming down my cheeks. Last night was the reality of me not being present at her wedding day and her not being present at mine. We had dreamt, we had planned, even beyond the wedding day, of a life that never consisted of us not being in each other's lives. Sigh. Its sad. It hurts, at times more than others. 

As I spoke it out with God and two friends, I felt the Holy Spirit say that there are layers to every relationship, even lost ones. Much like there are layers to your skin, the atmosphere, the wall of the heart, the earth and onions, relationships have layers. That you might think you've dealt with every layer, I mean it's a few years down the line, ahh, until one day, caught by surprise, you realise there is another layer. Another dream you dreamt together that won't happen because you aren't together, that relationship no longer exists for a moment/s to be shared. Adventures you won't ever get to experience together, hopes you can't share, secrets, thoughts, just life in general. The realization and disappointment is still as real and as raw as though you were going through the break up in this very moment.  

In the past I would have been upset with myself for even allowing myself to get as upset as I did about it or let it consume me for days and barely make it out of bed in the mornings because I would be fighting so hard to avoid the pain, the reality, yet nowadays I'm content to allow myself to feel the pain. To feel the disappointment, to own it, to allow myself to miss her when those moments arise and they do, often. To mourn the loss of something I had hoped for, a milestone, a moment and moments I won't get to share with her and she with me. A friend I had once cherished so very deeply and still do. Sometimes you just need to ride this wave of pain. You just need to sit in the current of His love and trust that He will lead you to a safe place, that He IS the safe place. A place of rest in the midst of pain, a place where you can just be held. 

And so I choose to let myself mourn the loss AGAIN and choose once more to lay it down, the pain, the disappointment, the hopes not realised, the friendship lost. I choose to allow God into this place with me. To allow Him to speak His Truth into my heart. Allow His Spirit to comfort me, to be held by Him. I'm reminded again in this moment that letting go is a process, that life is a process and that process is okay, we are so impatient with ourselves and with one another. We need to process, we probably will until that glorious day we meet Him face to face. Some things take time to process, a layer at a time, like I'm discovering with this particular friendship. Everyones journey is different, each ones process is different and that's okay. Some things can't be rushed, some things we can't just get over and move on with life as we've been told countless times. Some things just take time and that's okay. 

Today I am further along in my journey than I was before, I don't believe one ever arrives, not until Jesus does in any case. It hurts, but not as much as it did at the beginning. This is just God peeling off yet another layer, showing me what's in my heart, the stuff I have kept there and not even known it was there. Painful sometimes, yet with patience and such kindness, He lovingly leads me further into love, into healing, restoration and wholeness in Him. The pain is real, the disappointment is real, the sadness real, yet so much more is His presence. He is ever close. So near. He is Comforter. He is here, in this moment, with me. He speaks to my aching heart. I know I won't be here forever, this is a moment in time and even now I am well received here, I can be here, I can rest here, I can live a full life here...

Psalm 34:18

"The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed".

Knowledge, the source of validation?

As we have entered this very new year with all its possibilities and perceived impossibilities, it's so easy to get lost in the "having to know" and needing to "figure out" how the year will pan out. My friend, the astute and incredible wordsmith Zama Moyo shares his thoughts. 

We place a high premium on knowledge. You need not go much further than your primary school memories to see it: think of the feeling you got when, being somehow the only kid who knew the answer to the teacher’s question, you confidently raised your hand (in fact you had to contain yourself from leaping up in excitement) and proceeded to give the answer.

 

Or inversely, that one kid who always seemed to know a little more than most was in equal measure admired and disliked. Such a know-it-all.  Yet even this dislike was only there because deep down we wanted the same validation he did for knowing all that stuff.

 

And then our entire schooling careers are peppered with those familiar phrases that grace the classroom walls: ‘Knowledge is power’; ‘Know Your World!’ (Usually above those circular,blue globes at a corner of the class). Less obvious, those Latin mottos on our high school crests invariably have one or more of the following words: Conscientia; Scientia; Cognitio; Prudentia- all of which, of course, are a variation of what may be translated as ‘knowledge’.

 

We should place a high premium on knowledge. It can be the difference between victory and annihilation, break-through and frustration; between passing and failing a grade, and yes, even life and death. 

 

But the mistake of making knowledge the source of our validation is, I think, just as fatal as ignorance. As impressionable kids in the classroom we saw affirmation going to the kid who had the right answer. The residue of that followed us right into high school, with our dignified blazers reading Scientia something something. There, we put more pressure on ourselves to know more things (sometimes prodded by our teachers and environment): Know what subjects you should and should not do, know the people that will give us the most social cool points; know which university you will go to, know what your entire life will look like!

 

We have missed a trick if we only affirm the kid with the (right) answer more often than we do the kid with the courage to raise his hand.

 

I think what pre-schoolers can teach us is that beyond knowledge we need awareness. When a child is aware of the presence of her caregiver, then the knowledge of where her next meal will come from is irrelevant to her. Mom=security=food. Dad=protection=clothes. In each case, the awareness of the former trumps the knowledge of the latter.

 

So as we look forward to 2016, how about we stop obsessing about knowing where we’ll be in the next three years? Next decade? Heck, even in the next 12 months!  Vision and anticipation are great tools for navigating a world with endless possibilities and encounters. But deeper still, since we can’t know the future, what (or who) do you need to be aware of right here and right now?

 

We won’t have the answers all the time, but Oh! To be free to raise our hands in courage anyway.

 

Scientia cum libertate!

Zama L Moyo 

Checkout his blog Zama-m.blogspot.com

Happy 2016! Here's to resting in and enjoying the present :)!