Why Not Back Then?

I recently closed out a five day visit with an out-of-town friend that nourished places in my soul I didn't realize were that desperately in need. It was a time of deep conversation, light conversation, coffee-shop hopping, crazy video-gaming, quiet side-by-side reading, and hearty cooking. Sometimes we differed heavily in our opinions, but though we didn't budge each other much, the conversation never veered toward harshness or rejection of each other. We even prayed every day. I collapsed into bed exhausted, but also feeling like my time had been full and good.

With all that, I looked at this week and struggled to put my emotions into words. At first, what came up was the frustrated cry, "Why couldn't I have had a relationship like this sooner in my life? It would have changed so much!"

The more I thought about it and turned the idea over in my head, the more I realized I had framed it incorrectly. First, it wasn't that there weren't good friendships in my life, because there absolutely were. But when I look back at all of my friendships, I have to ask the question, who was I in them?

The answer comes back: Not very much of a person at all. Anxious fragments of a personality desperately trying to cling to anyone who even remotely entered my orbit, hoping that by patching up their wounds I would magically be made whole myself.

What did the other person want? What did the other person hope to get from me? What were the other person's hopes and dreams? How could I facilitate them being happier or, at least, less miserable? Where did they want to go for a meal or entertainment?

It was nobody else's fault that this happened. I just quietly omitted myself and my preferences from the picture. If something bothered me, it was probably my fault anyway and I should just move past it. Somehow.

You see, I learned early--very early--that my peers didn't like it when I spoke up about my preferences. Mostly because my preference was that everybody follow the rules exactly like teacher said. Very quickly I became the Goody-Two-Shoes Tattletale of my Sunday school class. Just as quickly, I was ostracized and shut out of everything.

And I didn't understand. Right was right and wrong was wrong! Couldn't everyone else see that?

But it didn't matter. I had somehow broken a different set of rules, unspoken ones that I had to guess at. When I kept running into rejection, I began to shut up and shut down. I still smacked into rule-sets and behaviors I could only guess at, but it didn't happen as often if I was quiet and kept my thoughts and opinions to myself.

I clamped down on myself so aggressively over the years that I straight up shed my own ability to think and restricted myself from learning anything that might lead to forming an opinion of my own--something that would surely set me in conflict with people around me.

As I said, I was barely a person, merely an anxious collection of personality fragments hoping to heal and thereby be healed.

It has taken me far too long to come out from under this. I'm sure my personality will continue to evolve over time, but for the first time I feel like I actually have a personality and a sense of self.

Who is Dusty?

She wrestles with writing. She's silly. She wants to be a part of peoples' healing, though at what level remains to be seen. She leans heavily conservative, though she's open to a civil and logical exchange of ideas. She'll probably drag Thomas Sowell, CS Lewis, and Jordan Peterson into any serious conversation. She's tired all the time, but wants to always be doing something. She's still figuring out the whole sister/friend/daughter thing, but is fairly certain she's got the wife thing down. In fact, at this point she's pretty sure she was designed to be a housewife--which is a positive ideal in her life. Cooking good food for people brings her absolute delight. God is showing her more and more of who He is and it is a marvelous adventure. She crafts for the sheer joy of making beautiful things. Dusty has ALL KINDS of opinions now, though she's working on when to be open about them and when to hold back a little bit. She hates conflict, but will no longer sacrifice truth or herself to avoid it. She still has old hangups to work on, but they no longer seem impossible to deal with.

Dusty is a person, now. Not perfectly whole, but far closer to it than she ever has been. She can say, "No," to people. She is learning to tell people about the thing they did or said just now that bothers her, even accepting that it may cost her the relationship to do so.

And as I look back on this five-day visit, my heart overflows.

"Why couldn't I have had a relationship like this sooner in my life? It would have changed so much!"

No. That isn't right. That isn't how it was. Back then, my hands were too broken to hold onto this blessing. It's more like,

"Thank You. Thank you, God, for this friendship developing when I am more myself than I ever have been. Thank You for a friendship that I can properly savor. Thank You."