Monthly Archives: July 2009

Voting, Drinking, and Marrying

Posted on
15

I was up late last night. Don’t ask me why.

But I had one of those late-night revelations:

Why is it that people can vote and marry before they are legally allowed to drink? Just seems… odd.

Odd that we can decide the future of this country… We can make a life-long covenant with someone…  All before we are considered old enough to put a drop of alcohol in our bodies.

I’m not saying I’m pro-alcohol. Or that we shouldn’t be allowed to vote until we’re 21. I’m just saying it struck me funny.

Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?

I Once Liked Being By Myself.

Posted on
11

I can count on one finger the number of days my husband has been home in the past 4 ½ weeks. He is on an intensive ministry experience this summer that has taken him away for a long long while, including two week-long trips with NO cell phone coverage. That meant I didn’t talk to him during those weeks. It felt so impossible.

He’ll be back tomorrow night. And before you get in a huff because I haven’t mentioned this, consider the fact that I didn’t want the whole world knowing I’ve been in our apartment by myself for over a month. I’m sure you’ll understand.

Last night I sat on my couch with five amazing friends (I have a big couch). Just a few hours sooner, I decided to have a girls’ night and invited a half-dozen of my closest seminary friends. I would provide the popcorn and show; they could come whenever.

You know how when girls get together they eat an exorbitant amount of everything? One brought her dinner. One brought brownies and sugar cookies. Another brought oatmeal cookies. Another brought mud masks and fingernail polish. Another ice cream, ice cream, and more ice cream.

We feasted. We laughed. We laughed some more.

And when they all packed up and left, I was overcome with gratitude. These girls represent countless dinner invites, coffee dates, games, afternoon chats, multiple trips to see The Proposal (multiple being the operative word), and more – all in the last four weeks.

Even though I’m the queen of “alone time,” I don’t think I could’ve survived the ups and downs of the past month without them. Yes, time away from Drew has been tough, but this was complicated by some seriously bad timing. They knew. And they helped.

As hard as it’s been to be so far away from my man for a month, I can say with deep assurance that I’ve grown closer to those friends because of it.

The Privilege of Knowing

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2

I sometimes take my friends for granted. I don’t mean that I take them for granted in the sense that they’ll be there for me… but in the sense that they’ll want me to be there for them.

I don’t think of my friends based on who will come over and knock on my door. I think an even deeper indicator of friendship is that, if I knock, they’ll open the door and let me in. They welcome me into their world.

There are friends who want to know all about me.

Then there are friends who want me to know all about them… In a deep sense. In a real sense. The types who brave the waters of disclosure for the sake of being known. For the sake of sharing. For the sake of connectedness. For the sake of friendship. They are transparent and honest and authentic and vulnerable with me, and that’s what I value most in a friendship.

My friends aren’t just people that I can tell my heart’s secrets to – but they are people who also trust me with their secrets.

Knowing these secrets is a privilege that I don’t take lightly.

It’s a privilege that I treasure.

What do you value most in friendship?

Do you tell your spouse everything?

Posted on
17

When Drew and I started dating, we were both working in youth ministry. We were mentoring teenagers. We were having one on one meetings. We were hearing 17 year old secrets.

And we kept them.

And we didn’t share this information with each other.

That practice continued when we were married. And it also stretched over into our individual friendships, Bible studies, and small groups. I have been in a small group of some sort for years. And I don’t tell Drew the details of what is shared in these sessions. These are grown-up secrets. And I keep them.

I may share with him the bits of information that relate to me, ie: what our Bible study leader taught us. Or what we were studying for that lesson. Or what I realized during our lesson.

The same goes for Drew’s small group experience.

We both mentor some college students now. And we don’t share those secrets either. We even hang out with individual friends, and we don’t share the things that are told to us by our friends.

Sure, sometimes that means one of us doesn’t know if another couple is pregnant. That’s ok. It doesn’t happen often. And when it does, we simply apologize and explain that we don’t share others’ deep information with one another. I think it’s much better to apologize for not knowing, than to apologize for sharing too much.

So that’s how we do it.

What about you?

Do you tell your spouse everything? Or do you keep others’ secrets a secret from your spouse?