When I was in college, Tia already had husband and a baby and a house in the big city.
I visited her.
During that visit I spent very little time with her.
I went shopping.
I went out to dinner with a group of friends.
I met a guy that I didn't know very well for him to take me flying in his little private plane.
I stayed up late using her computer in the guest room to talk with someone online and then slept in late the next day.
I didn't ever pause to think that maybe she had hoped I was there to see her or care about her life. I was too busy living mine.
When it was my turn to be married I didn't ask her to be a part of my wedding.
Because I knew so little of her life that I assumed she didn't want to be bothered.
She was all grown up and enjoying this life of...
of...
What did I think about it? Well that she dressed her baby boy in preppy clothes and sat with him at a coffee shop. I didn't have time or money for coffee shops so I suppose I imagined her life was easy and pretty. And that in a few years we'd have something in common.
But she let me know that she'd like to be a part of my wedding - that she'd like to be a part of my life - that the right now counted for her. That was useful for me. To realize that she genuinely wanted to connect even if I wasn't at her phase.
And then I got to that phase. I had little children and I was so lonely and overwhelmed and felt so stuck in this endless cycle of maintenance and meals and laundry and breastfeeding. Everything felt so hard.
I was in my red wallpapered bathroom on the phone with Tia when she said something about how fun her kids were getting. Playing pretend games of Peter Pan and analyzing gender roles and having funny conversations. I felt bewildered because my 2 year old was in speech therapy because I was the only one who could sometimes guess what he was saying and my 10 month old didn't talk and my belly was already growing another child. I couldn't imagine the next phase I just felt so sunk in this one.
And then I reached her phase again. My kiddos could be reasoned with and ride bikes and wipe their own bottoms. At that time I complained to my mother in law about some young couple I knew and she smiled a wise smile and said, "Yes, but that was you 9 years ago."
And now when young people - my exchange student for example - butterfly around with their busy worlds of prom drama, I have a new perspective.
I can, like Tia, love and understand. And speak my boundaries when needed. Clearly lay them out. And in giving that explanation of where I'm at (like her saying the being left out of the wedding felt hurtful.) This gives the opportunity for a new level of trust and respect and connection to develop in the relationship.
When I give someone the chance to meet my needs they either do, which helps me continue to invest into them but with a mutual connection, or they don't. If they don't understand or are not able to meet my desires then I have this opportunity to love sacrificially.
At one point I thought the mature thing was to love sacrificially without ever mentioning my own needs. But that is a mistake for three reasons. It promotes burn out. It prohibits me from really knowing myself or offering others to know me or deepen and strengthen a relationship. And it also makes the sacrifice of my own efforts instead of through Christ's spirit. Only once I have done steps of encouraging and supporting growth within myself and others can I then accept grace for the path of sacrificial giving. In other words, it's not useful to let people take advantage of me. Not for them nor for me. But once it's been addressed, I can then GIVE my advantage away if the Lord so leads. And usually He does.
It's a concept my husband explained to me.
If we have an advantage, isn't it a blessing to give it away?
Though my example was my friendship with Tia and the journey of my own maturing, this realization of knowing myself, explaining myself, and then accepting the limitations of others and not needing them to be perfect - this is a freeing understanding that covers a broad number of situations.
It's a meaningful feeling, as I sort thoughts before bed, to not be taken advantage of. Meaningful because I'm in control of my own attitudes and responses. And unhealthy thought patterns can be changed through grace. And I can give grace too. Because when I compare my outside with someone else's outside, there is some sort of tension or rivalry or sense of not feeling understood. But when I look at my inside and someone else inside, I find that we have a lot of struggles and dreams in common.
