Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

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Happy birthday to MInTheGap!  You, through this blog and others, have touched many lives and today is a celebration of how God has designed you to be a leader in His kingdom.

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It was late when the phone rang. I was already in bed, but I knew it was my best friend, J.

Claudia, this is J. I’m getting married!

J, I am so excited for you! How did he ask?

The conversation was short. It was late and we would talk tomorrow when I went to meet with J for our weekly Bible study.

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For the first time that I can remember, we did Christmas on Thanksgiving.  Well, not totally.  Just my brother and his wife.  And they didn’t give us any advanced warning, so they gave us gifts for Christmas and my oldest son’s birthday (somehow they missed my wife’s birthday?) and didn’t really have any good ideas to give us about what to get them.

But anyway, I’m not sure what to think of this concept.  On the one hand it sounds like a great idea.  The holidays are stressed as it is, and one of the biggest stresses is where you will end up for which holiday.  If you could streamline the whole giving thing to match up when the whole family was around you’d spread out the gift buying (last minute would now be in November instead of December) and whole families would have it easier when it comes to getting together.

Would that confuse the holidays, though?  Would we still be able to be thankful if we knew we were getting goodies?

All my life I’ve had penpals. Emails are grand, but nothing equals finding a personal letter in the mailbox…its pages filled with hand-written warmth.

Recently, a friend of mine, whom, incidentally, I haven’t seen since 5th grade, sent me a letter. Over the years our correspondence has dwindled, but we still manage to exchange Christmas cards and the occasional newsy letter. Pictures of the kids, details of life, chatty idealisms.

This missive delivered on all the above counts, so much so, that it lifted my spirits as a mini-care package would have.

It also contained three of her family’s favorite recipes–perfect ones for autumn cozies. I wanted to share one of them with you, and encourage you to sit down with a few lovely pages of stationary and the friend of your heart. It will do you both good…to know, that across the miles, someone is thinking of them and taking a few moments to let them know.

Wendy’s Pumpkin Soup

1. Melt 2 TB butter or margarine in a large kettle
2. Add 1/4 cup chopped bell pepper (optional) and 1 small chopped onion
3. Saute bell pepper and onion in melted butter till soft, not brown
4. Blend in 2 TB flour and 1 tsp salt
5. Add 2 cups chicken stock, 1 15 oz can unsweetened pumpkin, 2 cups milk, 1/8 tsp thyme, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp parsley, 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 1/2 cups precooked poultry (chicken or turkey), 1 cup precooked brown rice.
6. Cook till heated through and enjoy!

I’ve made this three times already–we love this recipe.

And each time we sit down to this specialty, I wonder perhaps, several states away, if my good friend Wendy is dishing it up for her loved ones?

Who makes a better friend: the person who is worried about protecting themselves from being hurt or the person who is willing to take that risk in order to allow another person to get close? The answer is obviously “the person who is willing to get hurt.”

A close friend is someone who knows you as you are and loves you anyway; therefore, it is impossible to build a deep and meaningful relationship if you never let your would-be friend get past the defensive walls you have erected to shield you from pain. (I am speaking from my own experience.) This applies to all relationships but is particularly pertinent to marriage.

To build a strong marriage, you must allow your spouse access to the “real” you. When you make yourself vulnerable enough for someone to see behind the facade you so often wear for others’ benefit, you also allow that person access to tender areas that are prone to be hurt. You didn’t get married because you wanted to live with a stranger. Most dreams of marriage center around a close, loving relationship where you are allowed to be yourself within the safe confines of your relationship with your spouse. Sadly, being human, your spouse is guaranteed to hurt you at some point in time and more than once. (Just a thought: you are also guaranteed to hurt your spouse.)

When that happens, it is easy to think (or act), “This hurts too much, and it’s not worth the risk to make myself vulnerable to this person. I’ll forgive, but I’m not letting myself be hurt like that again!” The walls come up, communication declines, and the marriage suffers. If you never tear down the walls, the loving closeness of marriage can quickly disintegrate into the polite distance of two strangers sharing a house.

Have you erected walls in your relationships? How about in your marriage? I know I have, and I have committed myself to tearing down those walls. I realize that I will almost certainly suffer pain because of that vulnerability, but I am willing to pay that price to have the relationships I want to have. I hope you are, too, for life without close friends, life without a close marriage, is guaranteed to be lonely.

P.S. If you are not sure how to go about bringing down the walls you have erected, I suggest you begin by reading the following excellent posts here at Weekend Kindness:

• A Crash Course in Bible Communication - Part 1
• The Time Is Now

Can you have friends with the opposite sex without it developing into more?  If so, what are the possible pitfalls?