Friends like these...

I found this quote today...


"Friendship is like wetting your pants - everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth"


But that's just a little side note...


I've had a few good ol' friends in my 28 years. I've messed up a few friendships too. I've been a good friend at times. I've been a pretty poor friend at times. I have friends that I've known for over 15 years. I have friends that I've known only a few months but expect to know for many more years.


I've learned a lot about friendship over the years. Some of it, I've learned the hard way.


One of the biggest things I've learned is that every friendship will be difficult at some point. I think good friendship is a really powerful thing, with the potential to change people, to change situations, maybe even to change the world! And I think that anything with that much power is going to be hard work somewhere along the line. 


One of my biggest problems in friendships has been jealousy. I've had good friends, people who I've been really close to, who I've messed things up with because I can't get past comparing myself to them and being jealous when I come out second best. People who are friendlier, prettier, more popular, smarter, better at tennis, holier, more talented. People who have got the job or got the guy and I've struggled to get past it. 


For years, I have run away from friendships when they get too hard. When I get too jealous, when I can't handle being second best, when I realise my friend can't meet my needs, when they hurt me, when I hurt them, I leave. Sometimes physically - moving to a new school or a new country. Sometimes just emotionally - retreating form the friendship, avoiding them, being awkward when I'm with them. 


But I'm done with that.


I'm over it.


The more I go through life, the more I see how important friends are, the more I see how everything can be stacked against friendship, the more I see they take work and the more I see how much they are worth it.

Fix me: Part 2

Can you fix me?


Long before I admitted I was broken, I spent a lot of time asking other people to fix me. I didn't even realise it.


In my teens, I moped. I was an excellent moper, an expert, some might say. When I was feeling a little down, a little in need of some sympathy, I knew exactly how to position myself - slightly out of the way of a group, alone but in the line of sight of key people. I would tell myself that I just wanted to be left alone, but really, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted everyone to see poor, sad Pip with her sad, broken heart. Moping.


But I can't congratulate myself too quickly on getting over that. I don't mope so much, but my sympathy-seeking has merely changed its form. When I find myself walking home from work, or driving to rugby training or sitting on my bed saying, “it’s not fair, it’s too difficult, everybody else has someone to rely on, someone to comfort them, I’m on my own and I hate it”, I'll text someone. Not to tell them that there's something wrong but so we can have a conversation that makes me feel better. In my head, it goes a little something like this...

I’ll text them something pretty normal, just asking how their day has been. They’ll reply and ask me the same. I’ll tell them that it hasn’t been the best day. They’ll ask me what is wrong. I’ll tell them. They’ll have the perfect answer and the perfect words and ultimately, come rushing over to make sure I’m ok. 

That’s how the script goes in my head.

Unfortunately, other people don't see the script in my head, so they only reply 2 hours later, or they tell me all about their day and don't ask about mine or any number of other normal things. Then I get frustrated with them, I feel let down, misunderstood, more alone, more unhappy.

I'm pretty sure it happens in a lot of relationships (and I use that word to mean friends, family, couples) all the time - two broken people come together and expect the other person to make them whole, but no person can ever do that. Sure, they can make us smile, they can make us feel better for a while (there has to be a song lyric in there somewhere), maybe they can even point us towards the solution, but there is no way they can get deep enough into the root of the problem to be the solution.

So, we stand there alone, crying louder and louder and louder , somebody, anybody, fix me!

But it's only when we realise that a relationship, another person cannot be the solution that we can have any sort of functioning relationship. It's only when we turn our eyes and our aches away from ourselves and away from each other and turn them towards God that we can begin to become whole and our relationships can be restored. 

Of course we can help each other, love and care for each other and there's nothing wrong with asking that of other people.

But asking them to be for us what only God can be...

Fix me: Part 1

When trying harder doesn't work

Wholeness. Completeness. Perfection. Fullness. Abundance. I have a long way to go. I'm a long way off. Here, as I am, broken, shattered, lost, hurt, tarnished. 

I can see it all the time. The brokenness shows in the things I think, the hurtful things I say, the selfish things I do, my attitude, which often leaves a lot to be desired. I don't want to think and say and do those things and usually, they end up breaking me a bit more. I want to be whole. And I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to attain that wholeness

I've tried running away, tried clinging to other people, tried being a perfectionist. I've tried and tried, harder and harder, scratching and clawing to try to achieve completeness.

I could give you a lot of examples. Here's a wee one for you...

A few years ago, my thoughts were consumed with wanting a boyfriend, something which, I now see, came from loneliness, a fear of being alone forever and a belief that once I had someone, then I would be whole.

It started to affect the way I treated people - jealousy and bitterness were pretty common emotions for me. I could see that it wasn't good but I didn't acknowledge that there might be deeper issues. I just told myself I was wrong and I needed to fix it.

Thus was born "Man Ban"- six months in which I would not think about boys, would not daydream about them, would not seek affection from them. Somehow, my logic told me that if I deprived myself of something, I would stop wanting it. Hmmm.

L o o o o o o o ng story short, I reached the end of six months a bit more broken. Maybe I did stop thinking so much about having a boyfriend, but it was less out of wholeness and more out of hopelessness. If I'm honest, I believed that I was doing such a good thing that surely God would reward me with a boyfriend at the end. Which sort of negated the whole exercise.

I can see now that I wasn't honest with myself. I think I didn't even really know myself very well. And that's the thing. God knows me. Forgive the cheesy Christian metaphor, but He wrote the instruction manual and over the last few years, He has orchestrated the healing to an extent I never thought possible and in ways I would never have planned for myself.

At the right times, the right people have come into my life. Challenges have come only at the times when I've been equipped to deal with them. The control has been taken out of my hands into much more capable hands. 

I haven't been totally passive. It took a long time for me even to position myself in the right place to follow, but when I did that, when I stopped kicking and punching and fighting, He started to lead me.

And now I'm getting there.

He's getting me there. 

The appeals of becoming a hermit

Don't get too worried about me, but there's something that really appeals to me about becoming a hermit. This feeling is usually stronger after a l o n g  d a y listening to people who are in pain. Or when someone constantly sings 'Call Me Maybe', the most annoying song in the world (not official, just my opinion). Or just about any time that I feel jealous or misunderstood or judged or let down.

That's when I think life alone would be easier

When I moved to South Africa, and again a few years later when I moved to New Zealand, I convinced myself that I could survive without friends, that I'd be quite happy to live on my own, do my own thing, do what I want. But the more I go through life, the more I realise how much we need people.

When you’re not surrounded by people, you are much less likely to get hurt. People will not be able to leave you because they are not there in the first place. There will not be anyone to get annoyed or angry with. There will not be anyone to break promises and let you down. There will not be anyone to be jealous of or to have to be patient with. Just you.

Sounds wonderful, right? Wonderful and terrible.

We are not designed for being alone. We are built for love, accountability, laughter, giving and receiving support, authenticity. We are designed for growth. 

We start off rough around the edges and much of the process of smoothing those edges out comes as the result of relationships and the community we are made to be in. As we bump into each other, clash, hurt each other, bring out the worst in each other, our roughness becomes all smooth and shiny.

Without people, we would never learn patience, never know love, never learn how to pick ourselves up after we’ve been knocked down, smile less, laugh less, have fewer memories, less joy. We would be stagnant, never changing, never developing. Maybe life would be easier without people. Easier, but so much darker.

People hurt us, but people also heal us. Turns out people are actually pretty cool. 

And that's when I know I am blessed to have people around me

Pancakes

Mac was one of my favourite people.


Mac was funny, often inappropriately, which of course, made him funnier. He was kind, valuing and including the people he met, whenever and however he met them. He made great pancakes. He was, by no means perfect, which he would be the first to admit. He was determined, at one stage holding the world record for the longest drumming marathon. He was strong, even right at the end. 

I've been wanting to write about Mac for a long time, because he had such a big influence on me. This week would have been his birthday. He always manages to sneak into my thoughts in mid-April, even though it's been nearly four years since he died. The memories just keep popping up. The time he taught me 'Afrikaans', of course, using my ignorance to make me say stupid things. All the times he, and his wife, Diane welcomed me into their home. The two day car trip from Port Shepstone to Cape Town with five of us in the car. The time we raced home from town through the gorge after Diane had found a snake in the house. All the times he, very convincingly, mocked my accent (get owyt naowu, wynd yer neck in). The many Sunday evenings we would gather at Di and Mac's house for pancakes. 


Mac was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and died a year later after fighting hard. For a long time, I weighed up whether I could and should make the trip back to South Africa to see him. I can't explain how glad I am that I did. Di and Mac picked me up at the airport before one of Mac's hospital appointments. The first thing he said to me was, "You're so white! I'm not even as white as you, and I have cancer!" Ah, the old Mac humour. That week I spent with them was incredibly blessed as I got to share a small part of the journeys of two incredible people. 


Despite all the circumstances, what I witnessed that week was hope and life. Naturally, there was a lot of sadness, but also real joy. Every day was seen as a blessing by the man who carried on with his life right till the last day. He wasn't the same Mac then as the Mac I'd met 4 years previously. He had an amazing serenity and wisdom about him. I remember one night, just after he'd taken the morphine that allowed him some mild relief from the pain, he gave me better advice about boy dramas than anyone who wasn't in a morphine induced daze. His attitude was inspiring - often he would be the strong one, while everyone around him was fighting to hold it together. He had faith that he could be healed, but if not, there was a better place for him anyway. Those weren't just words for him. You could tell he knew they were true. 


I had a lot of questions when Mac got sick. It didn't make any sense to me. Why would God take someone like Mac? Mac, who had so much to offer the world. Mac, who had impacted so many people. Mac, who was talented, funny, kind, generous. I guess, if anything, I learned that it doesn't always make sense, but even when it doesn't, God is still good. And if we only trust him and worship him when times are good and all our prayers are answered, He's no more than a genie in a bottle, controlled by our whims. I don't want to worship a God like that. 


Death is never easy. It was never meant to be easy. Maybe it was never meant to make sense. And I miss Mac, but the end isn't what I remember. What I remember is his journey, his life, his hope. It was a privilege to be a part of it.


And I'm sorry if you never got to eat his pancakes. 

You can take the girl out of the ghetto...

This post may not be super interesting for 95% of you, but I've just about moved out of the flat I've been in for over three years and I'm reminiscing, so just humour me as I take a little trip down memory lane into the depths of the ghetto to share some of my favourite memories...

Alice: Did you know that if you hold a cat over a glass of water, it'll start to move its legs like it's swimming? 
Pip and Kelly: Really? Let's try! 
KJ: Meow, meow, wriggle, wriggle, smash glass, run away
Alice: Hmm, maybe it was dogs

An epic win in the flat photo competition. Let's take another look at the winning entry:

Irish Potball - the great game invented by the great Jonny Shaw. It's pretty sad when you invent a game and the girls in your flat keep beating you at it though. 

My first birthday in the flat when Kelly, Alice and Brook filled my room with green balloons. I kept thinking I'd got rid of them all, but no, somehow more would always appear!

Discovering we could fit all four flatmates in the HUGE bath (fully clothed and just to prove a point, not because we bathed together)

Flat missions to the dairy in the dark to get ice creams...sticking close together in a group of 4, making sure none of us are wearing blue or red. 

The quote board. Some highlights for you (some are far too inappropriate (Kelly Tuck) to share publicly).
"The best thing about being a leopard would be being able to kill your prey and drag it up a tree"
"We need to figure out a way to figure things out"
"I see naked people all the time and I don't care!"
"If church was today, it would be 11am by tomorrow's time" (Hannah trying to explain daylight savings.

Oh good times! It really has been a treat. Alice, Kelly, Brook, Hannah, Ed, Jonny, Pete, KJ - a treat I tell you!

Who'd have thought?

For some reason, this time of year has often been significant for me. It's when me and my whole family have their birthdays. It was this time of year when I moved to New Zealand, when I travelled overseas with a sports team for the first time. And it was this week two years ago that I left my first job in NZ having been made redundant...

Without doubt, that week 2 years ago was a turning point. If you had told me before I came to New Zealand that I would be on the other side of the world, without a job and therefore, that my visa would be in doubt, I probably would have never left home. Before it happened, I would have said it was one on the scariest things that could happen.

The reality of it was very different. I never would have predicted the incredible peace I felt. Maybe not for the first couple of days after I found out. Those days brought feelings of
     fear 
           rejection
                        sadness
                                   anger
                                            hurt
but it still amazes me how quickly those feelings gave way to the peace.

I'm not even sure I can describe it adequately. I just knew it was going to be ok. External circumstances did nothing to encourage me - physios all round me were losing jobs or having their contracts changed. It wasn't a happy time to be a physio in NZ, especially not an unemployed one. But, for the first time since I had arrived in the country, I just had this feeling that I was meant to be in Hamilton and a faith that if that was true, that a job would come up.

So, I got to work, sending out my CV, hoping to get maybe a few part time hours after a couple of weeks or months. I never would have thought that I wouldn't have one jobless day. I never would have thought that I'd be able to carry on working with my rugby team or that I would find a job that I could walk to. But that's what happened. That and so much more. Timing was perfect for me to get some temporary part time work to fill in until I could start a new job, that again, came up with perfect timing. New jobs, new opportunities, new learning, new friendships, new visa! It was more than I had hoped for.

Looking back on the last two years, since that change, I'm so incredibly, abundantly, amazingly thankful for what happened. The scary thing, the huge change, the complete loss of security, it brought me faith, confidence, hope. I never would have thought it could be the blessing it was...I'm glad someone knows better than me.