I have been awfully remiss in my blog posts over the last several months. Many times I have found myself wanting to collect my thoughts by writing, yet I never seem to make the time to do it. Hopefully, this will reignite the discipline in me to articulate myself more regularly.
If you don't know or have forgotten, May brought my departure to Oregon for a brief five months to work at Young Life's Washington Family Ranch, much like it did last summer. While yes, I'm at the same location with some of the same people, the two summers could not be more different. Last summer taught me much about living in community, and the importance of community in my life. However, this summer has been the opposite. Over the last three months, my "knowledge" of friendship has been torn apart. Truthfully, I have somewhat prided myself, justified or not, in my ability to be a friend and my understanding of what friendships should look like. Now, I still hold true to my values in regards to healthy relationships and what those look like. That being said, I realized that I have been pigeon-holing my friendships. Friendship is the state of being friends. A friend is someone, generally outside of family or sexual relations, with whom one shares mutual affection. Thanks, dictionary. "Open-ended" hardly begins to describe those definitions. So why have I always viewed it as a finite entity? What compelled me to view friendship in such constrained terms? I wish I had the answer, but I don't. Speculation would guess it was my insecurities and my desires to have my friends fulfill certain holes in my heart.
This summer has taught me to be content in the present. By that I mean not only the present time, but also physical present. Often my mind wanders to this place of comparison between the friends whom I am discovering, and the friends whom I have already known. In growing close to friends in one location, I have felt like I am doing a disservice to my friends from home or from another adventure. Because of this, I hold back. I hamper the amount I will invest and care because I am scared of growing close to someone new. Friendships are not mutually exclusive, it turns out. Nor does the definition of friendship limit the number of friends you may have. Many of us have heard that quote that says we only have two or three genuinely close friends at one time. The thing that people leave out is that those two or three friends may change as often as weekly. In trying this summer to invest in our high school volunteers (Work Crew), college volunteers (Summer Staff), and Interns, I have learned that I simply cannot handle all people at once. In fact, I am not supposed to do such a thing. For every person that I invest in and get to know, there are many others loving the people I cannot. And there is nothing wrong with that, which I say as much for my benefit as anyone else's.
Physical location has a lot of influence over with whom we are close. Simply, it is easier to be involved with those we see all the time. But, there will always be days where we need someone across a distance who has been with us for longer or knows a certain part of our lives better. Is it true that right now one of my closest friends is a soon-to-be senior who lives in Lake Oswego, OR? Yes. Today was our last day of spending almost every day together for twenty-one days. We chose to invest in one another and be parts of each other's lives. Wouldn't it be strange if he wasn't one of my closest friends? I think so. Does my close friendship with him, or anyone else out here, discredit any of my friendships back in the Midwest? Or from last summer? No. I am not betraying anyone by caring for and investing in another human being. Everyone, out of their inherent worth as a human, deserves to receive love and care. So, when Jesus places a high school student from Edmonds, WA, or a wild-man who tries to convince me to drop everything and travel around the world, in my path and on my heart, I say "party on".
The hardest part in all of this is accepting that some friends are for a season, or multiple non-consecutive seasons. I have always wanted all of my friends to be constant and in one place. This, I have come to know, would cheapen all of them. If they were all with me all the time, how would I be able to invest in all of them? That would be a disservice. Allowing these friendships to exist separately is what allows me to love them all. The beauty of these friendships is that I can visit them when I need them, or when they need them.
"You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place."
Amen. And I would add that never being completely at home again is one of the most beautiful aches that I have ever known.
