Facebook, Friendship and the Trials of Seventh Grade

Her text came through at a moment that I wasn't ready to read it.

"You are isolating yourself again," it read. I glanced at it, ignored it, and moved on with my day. It's a pandemic, for goodness' sake. EVERYONE is isolating him or herself. There's no problem here.

Except, there was. There IS, really.

About two weeks ago, I decided to get the heck off facebook, for the most part. I found that watching people call each other names, watching bullying, watching the extreme ways in which we are willing to be keyboard warriors that shout and rant from the privacy and seclusion of our homes was taking a huge toll on me. Particularly on top of all the uncertainties with the pandemic. It was affecting the way I parent, how I do my job, which thoughts and voices I let set up shop in my head during the day. It was sucking time from my day and energy from my soul. It was distracting, disheartening and, most of all, paralyzing. 

But why? 

As I have slowly detoxed from that world, God has brought something sharply into focus for me: Seventh grade is still a big part of how I do life.

Seventh grade was 30 years ago. I really only remember small details of that period in my life. A lot of what I know about it is what my mom has told me. Apparently I cried. A lot. Probably more in that year than I have total in the 30 years since. I dreaded school.  I isolated myself because the risk of friendship became too painful. I had very few friends and basically none at school.That was the only year of my life where that was true. I have mostly loved school, craved learning. I was mocked for being smart, left to sit alone at lunchtimes. In recent days, I've started to remember how closely I watched the clock on the wall in the cafeteria, begging for free time to finish. It's made me wonder if my inability to sit peacefully in the now, to practice mindfulness and presence, is rooted in that wish for time to hurry up and finish then. I started my struggle with insomnia, a struggle I deal with to this day. I started running to dissipate the anger and sadness, a practice that has served me well, but has also sometimes taken the place of the hard work of lament and healing. 

Mostly, though, in this past week, it has become clear to me that the way I view female friendships, the way I retreat and isolate and keep to myself, is largely a product of that time. I don't trust women. I don't trust that they aren't gossiping. That they don't have nasty things to say behind my back or, honestly, straight to my face. Have I had some truly amazing friendships with women since 7th grade? Absolutely. However, do I assume those women are rare and unusual? I do. Do I avoid all women's ministry events at church? 100%. 

As I think about how I feel after I spend time scrolling or commenting, I recognize that facebook doesn't bring out the best in me. Nor in many of us, if we are honest. It reinforces my assumptions. It tightens and defines the boxes I have built. It allows me to villify and "other" people and it drives me inward. Bottom line, it usually makes me worship and focus on what I can do or say or believe much more clearly than who God is or what He is doing or saying. 

And that's a dangerous place for me to linger. 

Seventh grade still has power. But I don't want it to. I have never really sat down and hashed it out. I've never truly asked God to heal me of those deep wounds. To show me the ways I have let the pain of that year drive my relationships for 30 years now. So while I am grateful to facebook for unearthing how clearly that period still has power, I also know that it's time for a real and true break so I can lot God do the deep work of healing that He is clearly in the business of doing.

If you have been a friend I have pushed away, I truly apologize. If you have been a friend I have othered or vilified, may God reveal that to me so I can ask for forgiveness. If you have been a woman who has pursued me and tried to love me and been met with rejection, please know that I am working on this. I truly am. Part of what God has been showing me during this pandemic is who I truly am, in all the areas that are good and beautiful but also all the areas that still need growth.   

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and breathe. Journal. Paint. Run. Speak with humans face to face. Stay pretty much off of social media. Garden. Try to find my laughter and smile. Love and serve the heck out of humans on my ambulance. Pursue my husband. Use my punching bag. Pull out the guitar. Have amazing conversations about justice and shalom and grace because those things give me life. And just ask God to heal. To reveal. To redeem. And to infuse my soul with hope that this pandemic WILL one day end and that I will come out of it stronger, kinder and a better friend. 

Friday Ice

I woke up this morning to a glittering, ice-encrusted world. The sun is bright and reflecting, the air is brisk. It's Good Friday.

Much of yesterday as the snow and sleet and ice came down I was mired in bitterness. Bitterness over a winter that is hanging on in full ferocity, bitter that my toddler spends most of his time angry at the world, bitter that a particular recurring ailment of mine seems to have returned to add physical discomfort to my emotional frustrations, bitter that my whole life is currently spent cleaning up, bitter that soon our life will be filled with goodbyes again.

Bitter.

And on this day, one of the most sacred in the Christian calendar, the day that marks when the cross changed from the instrument of common criminal death to the symbol of God's greatest act of love and humility, His creation is encased in ice. Frozen.

My tulips that had such promise will have to fight for life.

The lilac buds that were set to bloom in just a few weeks may now have to wait longer to burst forth in their lavendar glory.

I can't help but see the similarities between this storm and my heart. For what else is bitterness but a layer of ice built around the heart preventing one from reveling in gratefulness? Preventing me from seeing the gifts that overwhelm my life?

What else, indeed.

This morning as I stole 5 quiet, lovely minutes to creep outside in my pajamas with my camera before the sun began to melt the ice, I was reminded of why the bitterness cannot define me. Of how Good Friday isn't the end of the story.

Because even as I gazed dolefully at my poor, pathetic tulips, I saw the stark beauty that surrounded me. The beauty in the ice that just moments ago had angered me because I wanted the beauty of spring. The way it made the colors of green and brown and red pop out in the landscape. Of how the world just seemed clearer, somehow.

I thought back to the confusion of Jesus' followers on this day so many years ago. To see their hopes, their dreams, the very life they had longed for slipping from their grasp. Their fear, their own bitterness at what they thought was the end of life as they knew it. Of how they didn't know the end of the story like we do.

Friends, it is clear to me that my biggest struggle in this phase of my life is the tendency towards discontent. Towards bitterness. In seeing in my life what is lacking, rather than what is Good.

And since I often tend to rush through Holy Week to get to the joy of Easter rather than engage the emotions that came before the morning that changed the world forever, I was suddenly thankful for the ice storm. Thankful for the way it revealed to me, once again, the ways my heart stays frozen even in the midst of so much light, so much warmth, so many gifts I've been given in my life.

The ways that I let what I think SHOULD BE crowd out the beauty that IS.

Today, on this Good Friday, I am asking God once again to help me let go of all that seeks to steal my joy so that in two days from now, when I stand with my community on Easter morning, I will truly be able to see anew the astounding glory of the resurrection, of the world made new, of death conquered and promises fulfilled. Of life in all it's messy goodness.