Strength and weaknesses.

I found that it is easier to love my mom when I don’t expect her to care about the way I feel.

No, this isn’t about me being negative. But, it’s about perspective, and it’s about understanding and it’s about not being upset or angry anymore. It’s about forgiveness.

Yesterday, my mom found me sitting with my face in my hands and so she asked me what was wrong. I told her all my feelings, which resulted in her basically telling me to suck it up. The she walked out on me, like she usually does. If I was sick, she would do something, but, if it’s my crazy heart on my sleeve-ness, it’s highly likely that she won’t. I took a deep breath when she left and planted my face in my hands again. Even though I knew that I didn’t feel better, I knew that I could handle it. I knew that it wasn’t my fault. I finally was able to remember that it isn’t because I’m too much, it’s just… my mom isn’t a emotionally vulnerable person, and that’s okay. She’s not the type of person who wants to know how to make me feel better when I’m about to have an anxiety attack. She’s not the type that is willing to be vulnerable as naturally as I can be. It’s not okay, but at the same time, it is okay, because we’ve all been through different things, and we all know different things. We all have different strengths and weakness. And, that is also okay, because there is a love that covers her weaknesses, a love that covers all of our shortcomings. So, I stopped holding against her an expectation to be strong where she has always shown herself to be weak.

My mom has supported me in many ways, and I am thankful for how she has cared for me all these years. When I was a baby, she would change my diaper as soon as it got poopified. She didn’t wait or procrastinate. She made sure I was clean. My mother makes sure that I am safe (despite my impulse to want to take risks), that I am healthy, and that I have the things I need to succeed. We get snow cones together sometimes and we laugh together about things us Panamanians comment on. She let me try out an expensive art school which she took out a portion of her retirement fund to help me attend. And even though she isn’t thrilled about me going to Mission Year, she’s allowing me to go. I have learned the valuable lesson to not place on her what she doesn’t have and what she doesn’t know how to give because in being able to stop that habit, my eyes have been opened in a way that has allowed me to see and be thankful for all the ways that she has given me life and loved me in the ways that she knows how.

I also found that it is easier for me to love my dad when I don’t expect him to care about my emotional or spiritual journey as well. I know that I have a real Father who will care for my every need and knows my most intimate longings, and I am beginning to be open again in continuing to live shamelessly, with the knowledge that there are people in the world that have gifts that will encourage me and help me grow to be myself. I know that there are women I can go to who are willing to listen to my doubts and root me on with my crazy dreams. I am thankful for those men and women in my life who have those gifts to encourage me in those ways, and it is okay if my mother doesn’t have the gifts that they have, because she has her own that are just as important.

Things have really changed in my heart and in the way I see my mother ever sense I have come home. I am so thankful, if anything else, among the crazy house-hopping I had endured in Savannah, that I had met a woman, who, instead of straight-out judging or gossiping about my hardship, she took the time to understand. She let me rant, cried out her solidarity cry of “me, too!”…. and then she shared her wisdom with me. She understood, because she went through it herself. She told me her story, and she ended upon sharing with me that several years later, there are still things that she can’t run to her mother for, but she is able now to appreciate her mom for who she is now, flaws and all. Even more so, she and her mother have started to see ways that they can celebrate each other, by allowing themselves to see each other, to take little steps to care about the things that don’t come as naturally to them, allowing them to grow together.

It was a fault of mine to expect a parent to be able to have it all: to be perfect, just as it was a fault of my mother to expect me to be perfectly like her. My mom isn’t a superwoman; none of us are. We are just human.

I don’t want my future children, or even my baby-sister, to have to harbor a sense of opposition and neglect towards me for failing to understand the necessity of grace and forgiveness. Even if we have been hurt, we are not victims, because we are whole human beings, we are deeply loved by One more gracious than we’ll ever be. Even if I can’t be best friends with my mother, like my mother is with my grandmother, I can finally be her friend, because I’ll take her as she is, knowing that I have a Friend who takes me as I am.

And this is one of the many revelations I have been bombarded and blessed with sense finishing my freshman (and maybe my only?) year of college! Woop woop for growing! :)

Maybe friendship is underrated... Is it?

Now that I have survived the perilous ups and downs of social anxiety over the past few days, trying to decide whether the thoughts in my head are truths and lies, warring in my head what thoughts to destroy about myself and which to embrace, and calling and talking with some mature women that I trust, I have come to terms that a lot of what I have been thinking about has a lot to do with questions regarding friendship. It's kind of like being drunk for a whole year, and then having a headache from being hungover. Today, I think I've woken up and realized what had happened this past year.

I think that friendship is something that we don't value as much in our culture as we could. Yes, good friends are hard to find, but, I don't think people are so sure what it means to be a good friend a lot of times. And I'm one of them. I doubt myself, regardless of what folks tell me. I think about the give and take that it entails, and I've reflected on the sacrifices (and lack of) that I've witnessed or experienced and I sometimes wonder if we often go looking for friends, but seldom seek to ask the question, "am I a good friend?" I think that instead, we seek to have someone be our friend before we seek to be a friend. But where would that lead us then? If One had not initiated love first, then, how could love possibly have begun? I think we learn how to be a friend by trying to be a friend, and also by being loved by a friend, constantly asking ourselves the question: "what does it mean to be a friend?"

I think questions about friendship are important to ask, especially in a society in which the vast majority of people would describe themselves to feel lonely a lot of the times regardless of their possession of 600 of them on Facebook. A lot of us feel like we have no one to turn to in times of need. Although we will all struggle with loneliness on occasion, or for a season, I do not think that loneliness is something that needs to be accepted or dealt with. There is a difference between solitude and being alone. Besides, being alone was one of the first things deemed to be considered "not good" in the world.

I think that a culture that constantly considers singleness to be a curse, and marriage as the solution to this curse, needs to begin to ask ourselves why this is the case. I say this in connection to the topic of friendship, because I have only found that most honest woman would confess that marriage did not fix her problems, but the problems that she had before marriage are still there. The only thing that she would confess that she has gained from entering a healthy marriage was a best friend that promised to be there and encourage her to be the best version of herself she can possibly be.

I don't know about you guys, but, I don't think it's fair to have to wait until marriage to find a good friend or be a good friend. I have both witnessed and have experienced the redeeming and life-giving qualities of a solid friend. Maybe we need to start to ask questions more about friendship. From the looks of it, we're tossing the word around a lot, but losing sight of what it means and what it looks like. We've got 563 friends on Facebook, but some of us feel like we hardly experience true connection with those around us. So what does it really mean to be a real friend? Ask yourself: are you a real friend? And who can we look to as an example of a true friend?

I really want there to be more discussions about friendships, especially as younger folks. Obviously, I don't have the answers. But maybe all of us can begin asking the right questions and put a spotlight on this thing. May this be the beginning. With your thoughts, questions, concerns, fire away.

I don't even know what happened.

I don't even know what happened. Sometimes having a tendency to be kind or honest can be hard to accept, because it can feel REALLY awkward especially the way other people react. I am often called naive or seen as naive. I don’t know if I am. I just really don’t know. I was even called “dumb” a million times today. It can be hard. It makes me feel sometimes like there is something wrong with me.

While I was still in Savannah, I was downtown with a friend from fellowship who had graciously allowed me to stay at her house for several days during my time of need. We went downtown because she wanted to see some friends who were going to go to a store opening. I didn’t have anything better to do really, so, I agreed and decided to go with her. As we walked downtown, I noticed that a lot of people were drinking, and there was one man, who was probably just a few years older than me wearing a cap backwards, lying on the ground with his pants low. I was really worried and wondering why he was lying in the middle of the ground, and I was about to approach him, but another couple had already approached him, so I let the three of them be and we continued on to the store opening.

When we decided to leave the store opening (it was really loud and not very interesting and people were just trying to act cool), so, we decided to head out, and we passed the guy again and he was unattended this time. Curiousity go the best of me, and I just decided to approach him this time and wake him up.

I didn’t realize that he was drunk at all. I thought it was just the heat or something. I was trying to get his attention and wake him up and ask him if he was okay. And he was like “WOAH.” I asked him if he was okay again, wondering if he had lost his friends, because I didn’t know what else to do, and he was like “woah woah woah” over and over again, his eyes creased and unfocused. Then, as he decided to stand up, I found a bottle of water that I wanted to offer him, I asked him if it was his, but he wasn’t paying attention and he just stumbled away. I kept calling after him, because I was so confused and wanted to give him some water, but my friend was calling me, too, to come over; that it was okay.

I told her about the water, and how I was concerned and just wanted to see if he was okay. I fumbled on because I was embarrassed that she and her friends were watching me and that awkward scene play out the whole time. That was when she confirmed to me that he was indeed drunk, and that she was calling me because she was concerned for my safety.

I later confessed to her that I had never been around a drunk person before or seen a person lying on the ground because they were so drunk, so I had never thought that I should be concerned for my safety. In fact, the only time I have seen someone lying in the street before was a poor blind man in South Korea. I was a lot younger, and I was told to ignore him. So I didn’t want to ignore a man on the street this time. She told me that she called me because people tend to be unpredictable when they are drunk. And, I guess she is right. I just didn’t really think of it because I was thinking of other things.

It’s an awkward life experience. I think, that even sharing this story might be awkward in itself. I am 19 and I have just never seen a person wasted like that before, and for my age, it is to be expected. I am not ignorant but at the same time I AM oblivious to the idea that people who are under 21 drink despite the law. Several of my friends are older than me, and so they drink, and I’ve been around friends and family while they drink, but, I have just never seen a person passed out on the ground like that before. And so, I assumed that the only thing you can do is offer them help. My only experience before is that I’ve HEARD people talking up a storm while they were drunk or crying and babbling about how drunk they are. But, I’ve never encountered a drunk person who was that vulnerable before.

I think it is awkward for me, because, I just don’t really think of alcohol at all. When people intend to drink, they never invite me, and that is probably why I forget that people get wasted all the time. I don’t have a taste for alcohol either, which is probably why I forget it exists. The only place where I felt like a belonged despite being a non-drinker was Wild Goose festival. There was a beer and hymns tent where people sang and drank beer together, both drinkers and non-drinkers. I was offered wine at the campfire by someone who was underage, and I sipped some, and she made me feel comfortable in my own skin despite the fact that I didn’t really like it or want it. She didn’t rant endlessly about all the drinks she has. She was present, and she saw the both of us, here in that moment. She didn’t make me feel like an outsider for being a non-drinker. She didn’t make me feel like I was missing out on something. That’s how I felt when I was at the tent with the beer and hymns, too. We were present.

Despite how awkward what ever I did there was, whether it was being curious/caring/kind whatever… I think being kind and caring enough to stop is a higher calling, even if people call you naive or treat you like you are dumb. I don’t think that people understand that when I’m am doing things out of kindness, that I am not doing it because I’m “childish” or “naive” or dumb or ignorant, even if it looks that way and even if it is. I am aware that people hurt people. I am aware that the world can be a tough place to be. But that wasn’t even the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw this guy. In fact, the first thing I thought about when I approached this person, even though I did feel nervous, it wasn’t so much the thought that he would be dangerous, but whether he would think I’m weird for approaching them. I ALWAYS feel weird when approaching people, or trying to care. But, I want to care because most of the time, I do.

I don’t really know what to make of that experience, and I don’t even know why it was so significant for me. Maybe it is because I find it hard sometimes to go back to being cynical or unaffected. It feels a lot like lying. Or maybe it is because it makes me think of fifth grade: a time when I felt like everyone knew something I didn’t. I was in fifth grade again. Right now, as I type this, I feel like a little alien again who doesn’t know how to think, be, or act. I don’t know.

I just really needed to vent this story. What are your thoughts?