Sometimes life is like an awkward dance.
Right now I’m in a season of life that’s full of blossoming new friendships. In the last several months I’ve met some really great people. The kind of people I’ve been praying into my life for years.
While there’s something new and exciting about friendships in the beginning stages, there is also something unfamiliar. There’s a learning phase that comes with any new friendship.
Sometimes that learning is messy.
The joke that goes over like a lead balloon because someone doesn’t get your humor
A misunderstanding that occurs over a short text message
An email that goes unanswered for days due to busyness and nothing more
Words that were meant to encourage that somehow sliced open an old wound instead
Occasionally I walk away from conversations and wonder: Did that person get a good glimpse of who I really am?
That’s a hard question to answer. We are quirky people. And every one of us comes with a personal history that helps us understand why we do and say the things we do.
Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) newcomers don’t get the file full of our history. They can’t read our actions and hear our words in the way people who have lived some of that history with us can.
So we bumble and bump our way through new relationships hoping that grace will cover our flaws and at the end of the day our new friends will still pick us.
There is something risky about friendship. Putting yourself out there again and again can be tiresome. Inviting new people into the authentic places of your life isn’t natural. It takes work.
The longer you live the more work it takes because the sacred places of your heart have been trampled by people you once welcomed with the same gusto and hope you now extend to those who have just entered your life.
Forgiving people in your past becomes the key to unlocking new friendships in the present. Realizing that you are an imperfect person who also needs forgiveness is what gives you permission to forge ahead into the messiness of new relationships.
These friendships are difficult to navigate because they come with a high level of expectation. This time we’re hoping that maybe—just maybe—we can be perfect. We’re often hoping the same of another person too.
When we get bummed, and our toes get stepped on, or we unintentionally elbow somebody dancing along right next to us, the dream of being perfect comes crashing down around us.
The romance of new friendship is lost.
But the familiar rhythms of doing life with somebody who really knows you begin to set in. New friendship evolves into true friendship.
And suddenly the dance doesn’t seem so awkward after all.
