If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Mother Teresa

I got a text from a girlfriend after three of us had spent the afternoon together, and it’s been on my mind ever since. 

We had been eating our ordered-in lunches at one of our kitchen tables; we’d laugh, then cry, then laugh all over again, just as we’ve done for years and years and years together.  We have watched each others’ kids grow up as we’ve shared the pains of parenthood, church, work, health, extended families and relationships over so many hours together.  I honestly can’t believe the hard things they have faced; we’ve felt such tenderness together.  But the hardest of all they share is when they’ve felt judged when people don’t know what’s really going on with them or their kids or when they feel misunderstood for their choices.

Her message just said she was grateful that she could tell us things and never feel any judgment, just love. It touched my heart that she would feel that.  I remember her telling me on one of our drives together who she could trust as friends.  She counted on one hand.

I have friends in other parts of the world who have also felt betrayed, misunderstood, and abandoned by the people in their lives.  I know these women and their hearts intimately; we’ve been friends for decades. We’ve spent hours together as they’ve shared their experiences and the pain of feeling misread, of other women shutting them out because of differences or circumstances they know nothing about.

What I’ve realized is that judging is mostly only a problem when we don’t know someone.  Because once we’ve gotten past the small talk and superficial chit chat, when we really take note of who she is, what she’s going through, and what her life experiences have been, when we understand her pain and fears and insecurities, it’s the most natural thing in the world to just love her, to feel her heartaches, to laugh at the absurdity of life with her, to want to be a true friend, to draw her close and be a soft place for her.  It seems to me that judgment stems from assuming we know more than we do about another person’s story.  Most of the time we’re simply not privy to much at all.  And all we’re left with is what we can see.  But how often does the outside convey what’s really happening inside another person’s home or family or head or heart?  How likely are we to show the truth ourselves?

I’d say every single girlfriend I have looks like they have everything going for them. I’m surrounded by amazing, strong, competent, beautiful, contributing women who are raising excellent families and making a difference in their spheres of influence. They’re dependable, easy, fun, and optimistic, just lovely and loving women.  For sure.  But every single one has heartache. Every single one. They all struggle, whether it’s the family they grew up in, loss, their kids, marriages, finances, feelings of self worth and belonging, faith questions, health issues, infertility, pornography, balancing work and family, questioning what their purpose is, feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, anxiety, loneliness, just everything that goes along with regular life.  Some I know better than others, and the ones I see only superficially still look like they have it all handled in my mind until we’re able to spend more time together and are able to really talk.

Fortunately, we likely have friends who know us up-close, who have made the effort to spend time with us, who genuinely care about our worries and concerns, who are not threatened by our differences but instead ask about our perspectives, friends who simply personify love. We know how reassuring and secure it feels to have this kind of support.  We’re allowed to just be where we are, uncensored, unfiltered, authentic, raw, the real us without needing to show up in an acceptable, put-together way.  What a relief and comfort to feel safe in their company and to trust that what we share will be guarded and accepted, not judged or spread.

It is a sacred responsibility to be this kind of friend.  And such a privilege to be invited into someone’s heart.  But until we are, we can offer grace and empathy by assuming the best in others and by acknowledging that, even though we don’t know the specifics, there is likely something painful or difficult we’re all hiding behind. 

I’ve found it most helpful to simply spend time with each other beyond the superficial. I wonder if we can make more of an effort to safeguard what’s shared with us, to assume the best in others, and to withhold judgment.   I wonder if we can be the kind of person others can feel confident about trusting.  Inviting, including, reaching out, uplifting, speaking kindly, and never giving the impression of judgment in the slightest.  All this boils down to is really just loving others.

I have spent a lot of time with one of my favorite friends talking and texting during a difficult transition.  As I asked what I could do to help, she replied with poignant words I’ll always remember and cherish, “There’s nothing to do.  Just love me.”

I can’t help but think that’s the key to relationships. We have nothing to lose by simply loving people, by giving them the benefit of the doubt, by being a safe person in their lives, by letting down our own guard and pretenses and allowing others to be vulnerable yet secure by accepting them where they are, regardless of what we perceive their lives to look like.  

 

The luxury of lingering

Not long ago I gathered with several women at a friend’s house to help clean as she moved.  What an enjoyable morning, easy chatter, comfortable laughter, just catching up as we worked alongside each other.  While I had been friends with her for several years, I felt sad and regretful that it took her moving, along with the intimacy of cleaning the walls of her bathroom alone together, to really share our hearts. I had missed out.  Why had I not engaged sooner?

I think of relatives who live just a few hours from us.  How often do we make plans for a weekend together?  Not for a holiday, not for a large family reunion, but just to hang out during regular life, just our little families.  Todd and I have mourned the years we’ve missed out on, nearly all our kids are gone and we regret that we didn’t make more of an effort to develop cousin relationships; we wonder if it’s too late but want to do better.

I’m thinking about the friends whose family members’ funerals I’ve attended this year and the inspiring lives we were celebrating.  I have loved and admired the women of these families for years, these mentors whose lives have intersected with mine on occasion but not consistently. While I care for these women so much, when it came to a serious loss, I wasn’t sure I had a right to be involved because I had only really ever been on the periphery of their lives. Why hadn’t I made more of an effort before it came to this? Why hadn’t I reached in to spend more time with them and to get to know them much better so that I could be someone they could count on and turn to?

I went to lunch with two friends after one of the funerals. We lingered in our darkened cocoon of a booth, nestled together in warmth until we honestly didn’t need another refill on our waters.  And stayed some more.  Afterward, we shopped unabashedly, shamelessly pulling dresses off the racks as if we were looking for a prom or homecoming gown and not a suitable, age-appropriate mother-of-the-groom dress.  Something called Spanx was new to two of us, our seasoned and wise friend-guide introducing us to the merits of a whole new world of undergarments.  Heels, so high, so classy, so timeless, so perfectly sculpted for the occasion, reminiscent of olden day hunts for just the right footwear to dance in.  Conversation wasn’t contrived or monitored or censored.  It was stream of consciousness at its most vulnerable: open, honest, questioning, wondering, revealing. We were raw and candid as never before, and it was splendid.  But I questioned if it was only because one was moving; would we have spent this time and been this open if it had been just a regular Tuesday?

One who moved came back to stay for a few days to tie up some loose ends.  Having her with me felt like a teenager sleepover and was precious.  We sat on the beds in her room all afternoon that first day and talked until the room grew dark and I needed to start dinner.  That night we stayed at the table with my family and talked without moving till bedtime.  The next day I had two of our good friends over for lunch, and we sat and talked at my table again until it was time to start dinner once more. 

As I thought about how much fun it had been to have her stay with me, to wake up and eat breakfasts, lunches, and dinners together, to spend hours together with nothing pressing, not even noticing the hours passing, I realized it felt just like having my sister around.  I thought about the women who had joined us those two days she’d been in town and how much I love and cherish them.  I felt like I was with my high school girlfriends all over again, and I felt a lightness and acceptance and joy that we don’t indulge in during a regular workweek. 

I asked her why we wait.  Why haven’t we, in all the nine years we’ve been friends, taken a girls’ overnight trip or gone shopping like that?  Why wasn’t it until she was leaving that the three of us really connected like this? Not that we haven’t spent time together, we’ve done dinners and lunches, of course. We’ve sat in each others’ lives, for sure. It’s just that we’ve always had to get back; we’ve always had families to take tend to, deadlines, projects, appointments.  We’ve always assumed probably we’d make time tomorrow or next week. 

A couple weeks back my sister and I flew out to surprise our sister who is dealing with her cancer again.  A trip that was admittedly too short, but I found myself reminiscing just last night about being together doing nothing but watching stand-up comedy and The Home Edit on the couch all curled up together eating pasta and chocolate chip cookies.  We got our nails done, we ate out.  We talked and shared for hours as we stood in the kitchen and as we drove for miles and miles.  But why did it take cancer to beckon us?  Why hadn’t we planned a girls’ weekend much, much sooner? And way more often?

I’ve had two friends in the hospital lately.  We love them so much, both feel like family.  But I haven’t been up close and in their lives like I know I could’ve been.  I seemed to put off visiting for some reason.  Why is a question I’ve asked myself a million times the past week.  Why, when it became serious, did I finally make the effort?  Why in the hospital and not in their homes?  I’ve been a perfunctory friend perhaps but haven’t always tarried, something I think I’d already recognized as well as regretted, just that this week drove it home.

I remember a glorious day with couple who had become our good friends near the end of vet school.  We each had our two oldest children, and near graduation we made plans to spend an entire day together, just eating out, going around town, and visiting together with our kids.  We’d known each other for nine months and this was the first time we’d spent long unscheduled hours together; it was heavenly and obviously remains etched in my heart twenty years later.

While there’s no way most of us can spend our days just shopping and eating out and sitting by the pool, these past few weeks have helped me appreciate the relationships and times when I’ve made an effort, when I didn’t postpone drawing them in close, when I—and they—made the time.

I relish my weeks with my mom attending Education Week, a gloriously simple week full of early-morning classes and treats and laughter together with our friends.  Of course it’s taken some juggling to leave my kids during the first week of school, to take the time off from my normal life, to make sure things will be fine back home.  But with Covid canceling last year and with my mom getting older, I don’t know how many more years we have.  And so I’m beyond grateful we’ve made the effort all these years.  The memories are so precious.

Earlier this week three of us were working in a friend’s kitchen helping her unpack.  This felt good.  Comfortable.  Familiar.  Here was a friend who has been with me on many, many occasions.  We’ve spent hours at the lake and at the park and on her couch and eating out.  I didn’t realize how these times of just being together added up, how easy and intimate our friendship had become; but all those days spent just being together created a familiarity, a comfort, that could now be drawn upon simply and without awkwardness.  I hadn’t realized how bolstering those days in the sun had been to our friendship.

Over spring break we rented a house with our dear friends.  We did nothing of consequence. Truly nothing. I found Todd napping on the couch at ten in the morning.  We spent the better part of another day honestly just basking in the early spring sunshine on the back patio doing nothing more than watching the kids and talking.  We lingered over dinner, we laughed over games with our kids.  There was no agenda, no purpose other than to be together and just relax. This was also good. A family who feels like our family.  I think because we’ve made the effort over the past ten years we’ve known each other to carve out time for this kind of thing, slow days of just being with each other, so many days camping, being together in each others’ houses, just small drops that coalesce and become a reservoir.

 

I guess I’ve just had these few scenes come to mind as I’ve asked myself why, when I know the joy of close, intimate relationships, I haven’t made more of an effort during regular life instead of waiting for a loss to reach in and engage.  Why did it take a move or a tragedy to shake me awake, to show me the beautiful people God has placed in my life?  I try.  We’re all trying.  I’m not saying we’re not.  But there is something strengthening and enlightening about real connectedness that stems from spending unstructured, lingering time together.  And maybe that’s a luxury we don’t feel we can indulge in. Life is full.  Busy. Totally get it.

But is it simply a luxury we don’t have time for?  I think of all the shows I’ve watched this past year.  I notice the hours of my screen usage pop up every Sunday.  I see the list of books I’ve read written in the back of my journal. I'm aware of the hundreds of podcast episodes I've listened to. I’m not saying any of it’s bad.  Just that we make time for what and who we value.  And I know it’s not because we don’t care or we’re not interested or we don’t want to invest in these relationships, not at all.  All I’m saying is we just don’t know when we won’t have tomorrow or next year.  We don’t know when some kind of change will take place and we’ll be left wondering why we didn’t make the time for just being with our people. Not the scheduled frenetic compulsory visits and events we show up for.  I’m talking about making time for doing nothing but carving out time to just sit with each other, to listen, to be silly, to share, to know each other in a deeper, closer way without diversion.  I know there are always reasons to put this off till next week or next month.  We hug and tell each other we need to get together soon.  But inevitably the weeks and months turn into years, and I’d just rather have memories than regrets.