One and I talked, well, we sorta talked, yesterday. His more then a girlfriend was in the room with him, it was over the phone, and ... I, while alone and thus able to direct my full attention to him, was a bit in the middle of something. I pushed "pause" on the Civil War doc (Ken Burns) which was playing on Netflix and set my note book aside. He was saying something about his living situation at law school, something about the guys are making different arrangements next year, their final year. Hmmm.
I thought he was getting ready to tell me that he is preparing (me for him) to move in with his girl (and maybe he is/was ... still unclear on that). I said I would hope for him that he will cherish "his love" enough to not subject it to a relationship with a back door. At this point in his (adult) life I defer to his judgement as he makes life choices ... he said that he values my perspective. I think I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion and he was unable to redirect me because he selected to begin a private conversation when he wasn't alone. I'm not very good at nuance over the phone, and his follow up txt indicated something more/else. He says we need to sit down together and talk. We are about 1200 miles away from a face to face. Skype?
Anyway ... a couple of things I wanted to note this very fine morning (clr/45F here) ...
As I told him, I am perfectly willing to support them (the FIVE) in the decisions they make for themselves, but I do appreciate the opportunity to offer my grey haired perspective to the process. He was quick to assure me that he wasn't calling to ask my "permission" ... I laugh right out loud ... I've known him all his life, I know he's not going to start asking permission at this late date! I'm guessing it's not even in the gene pool. Truly, I am just relieved that any of them will seek counsel, and that mine might be included.
As we ended our little phone talk, he began to not understand my train of thought ... and by then I was driving and talking on the phone, something I really don't like to do. I told him I'd give some thought to what I wanted to say ... to make my position clearer ... and, this is what I think for me, not for him, not for anyone else. Maybe I am still trying to refine exactly where I am on this ... for various reasons it is quite a bit on my mind of late.
So ... here's where I am at:
A person is delivered in to a situation which they had no say over (birth). And ... the somewhat empty slate of them begins to fill up. They begin their lives with people (their family) who they probably had no choice in. Or maybe they did, I do not know when a soul is created and/or what might be before birth. Because I believe there is life after the end of the earth suit (death), it makes sense to me that there may also be life before birth ... ummm, yeah, I know that's a idea on the edge of a cliff, totally unsupported by anything knowable ... but, I do believe what the Bible says of the life of Christ; He existed before, and unconstrained by his human body, as surely as He exists now. Maybe our little souls do select the circumstances in which the time of "life" is played out. Maybe there is seating some vast somewhere and we sit quietly and watch until we can stand it no longer and we bound from our seats imploring God, "Put me in there ... I believe I may make a difference during that time with those people... let this one life I get to live begin right there!" Maybe. Nothing I've seen specifies otherwise. If life is about the choices one makes, why the apparent huge disparity of options? Maybe there truly is only one important choice to be made during one's life time ... that is a different topic.
All that to say ... you "get" the start you get with people chosen (let's say) by God. (Or randomly if you prefer. I do not have faith in "random", but I do have faith in God.) I start with "these guys". Then, later, I begin to select "friends". In my case, my first friends were my brothers. As life has been lived I see how fortunate I was to enjoy the companionship of siblings as friends. Tommy has known and loved me for a very long time. He is my oldest friend aside from being my brother. So ... circumstances placed him in my life, and I also chose him as "one of my people". Family ... then friends. Family, I think of as "given" to be "my people", friends, I have as "chosen" to be "my people". Later you choose a "super friend" (lol) to be a life partner and maybe you extend your family with them (babies). Their birth family and your birth family support the "super-friendship" to varying degrees (in-laws). Ideally, you and the in-laws choose each other as friends or at very least as family ... sometimes that does not happen, and I think it is by choice either way. I already know that I will chose to love my children's super-friends as closely as I am able to as my very own ... they will be "my people". And perhaps some glad day, also their individual super-families (grandchildren). I didn't think about it like that when I was busy falling in-love. I never thought one bit about what the family (the in-laws) I was committing myself to in life journeys with might be like. I saw only the "super friend" aka husband. Later I noticed that he came "wrapped" in family ... who were potentially to become my family and family for our children ... they were potentially a lot more important then I realized.
My husband believes there is one single person on the planet whom is your "other half". I don't. I think you are an entire soul when you are born. I conclude that because on judgement day you are alone with God for the evaluation of your ... choices. God didn't seem to cotton much to Adam and Eve blaming each other in the first accounting. And ... as I live my life, I have never felt responsible in my soul for choices my husband has made purely on his own ... I have felt bad for my part in some of his actions which I "encouraged", I have felt bad for my part in some of his actions which I didn't "discourage", and most especially those which I remained silent on for whatever reason.
I do think the role of friends is to offer support/shelter in its many forms to one another ... even more so, to "super-friends". Super-friends formally stand before God promising to cleave (to adhere closely; stick; cling (usually followed by to ). ... to remain faithful.
Super-friends make promises that close friends seldom consider though frequently actually do support (to the extent of the friendship).
So, this is taking a while! I don't really have time for all of this, this morning.
Family
Friends (friendship/companionship)
Super-friend (marriage/intimate(intertwined) companionship)
Super-family (for me, first my children, then their super-friends/super family, aka grandchildren)
somewhere in there are the in-laws, the nieces and nephews ... they should be chosen, they should become friends, they should become family)
Church friends (again should be "like" family, hahaha and they sorta are, like one big dysfunctional family)
People we are closely associated with via situation ... neighbors, co-workers ... our "village" ... I think that's a funny word choice.
[Notes from Four Loves, C.S.Lewis:
The especial glory of Affection is that it can unite those who most emphatically, even comically, are not; people who, if they had not found themselves put down by fate in the same household or community, would have had nothing to do with each other. If Affection grows out of this - of course it often does not - their eyes begin to open. Growing fond of "old so-and- so", at first simply because he happens to be there, I presently begin to see that there is "something in him" after all. The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not "my sort of man" he is a very good man "in his own way" is one of liberation. It does not feel like that; we may feel only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. That "in his own way" means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncracies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate. (pgs. 35-36)
I thought this was interesting. Making room for people not exactly your flavor ... Two encourages her siblings to date alot of different kinds of people and learn cool interpersonal stuff from the time spent. It's easy to be seduced by one's very own flavor ... but ... well, I think it's very important to bond with "your very own flavor" ... come home to that, but don't limit all your doings to just what's comfortable and easy ... . Be open to a range of personalities, love easily ... that's what I would say to my own children. As this next quote suggests ...
The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the crosssection of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who "happen to be there". Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed. (pg. 36)]
I think I chose (and continue to choose) my friends. I guard my heart there initially, because I see friendship as a commitment. Obviously I see super-friend as a huge, life altering irrevocable commitment. Family ... commitment. Super-family ... total commitment. Hmmm ... church friends ... should be a commitment there. We should support one another, but we seem to do a lot of picking lint from each other's souls only to find that was actually a thread left hanging by the Master weaver. People around our lives ... I take a do no harm stance there ... let them come and go as they wish ... offer "support" in the form of small kindnesses as one can ... they are not my people, but they are people.
And ... I am totally out of time here. For now.
I offer that I think treating one who may be one's "super-friend" as less then that irrevocable commitment may irrevocably damage the super-friendship. I think it's important to be clear on what is being offered and what is at stake. The people I consider friends ... hold my heart ... not just tiny pieces of it, their hands are on the whole thing. I become "unguarded" in those friendships. I think one should cherish and offer cherish-ment to people who touch one's heart, and those whom entrust their heart to another's care ... and most especially so with their "Super-friend".
I do believe we are obligated to "make a difference" and "let a difference be made" for/by those people in our life. I think love obligates us. I think we are more obligated where there is more love, where the heart is involved.
Super:
a prefix occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, with thebasic meaning “above, beyond.” Words formed with super- havethe following general senses: “to place or be placed above orover” ( superimpose; supersede ), “a thing placed over or added toanother” ( superscript; superstructure; supertax ), “situated over” (superficial; superlunary ) and, more figuratively, “an individual,thing, or property that exceeds customary norms or levels” (superalloy; superconductivity; superman; superstar ), “an individual orthing larger, more powerful, or with wider application than othersof its kind” ( supercomputer; superhighway; superpower; supertanker ), “exceeding the norms or limits of a given class” ( superhuman;superplastic ), “having the specified property to a great orexcessive degree” ( supercritical; superfine; supersensitive ), “tosubject to (a physical process) to an extreme degree or in anunusual way” ( supercharge; supercool; supersaturate ), “a categorythat embraces a number of lesser items of the specified kind” (superfamily; supergalaxy ), “a chemical compound with a higherproportion than usual of a given constituent” ( superphosphate )
(in beekeeping) the portion of a hive in which honey is stored. (funny ... My Honey in the midst of the hive of life)
su·per·fi·cial/ˌso͞opərˈfiSHəl/
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