One Saturday night a couple of weeks ago, while I was sitting in my room staring at the computer screen, I heard a series of booms to the East. I pushed back the cupboard door that was obscuring my view and saw them--fireworks. Across the valley, a small festival was taking place and it had culminated in a fireworks display that I could see from my bedroom window.
Three years ago, when we were in the very beginning stages of planning our home, we sat on the hill where our front porch now stands, and watched the fireworks display. It was so encouraging to us to think about the day when we would be able to sit on our porch and see those bursts in the sky.
I'm finding that, in my life, there are lights and there are booms. Sometimes the booms are so loud that they're the things that capture my attention the most, and I don't always notice the lights in my life.
Recently, I was in the very uncomfortable position of being tested, but I didn't know I was being tested until after I'd failed. Someone I know only as the daughter of a friend began posting to my blog under a pseudonym, baiting me to see if I could handle "debate and discourse" (her explanation). She had intended to "test me for depth" and hoped to get in and out of my life anonymously and thought that testing me in a public venue, my blog, was the best way to accomplish her mission.
Unfortunately for them, and probably for me as well, I was able to see her I.P. address in my comments program. From that, I knew who the commenter was--kind of. My friend's adult daughter was posting from both her house and my friend's house, so I assumed (yeah, I know) that it was both the friend and the daughter ganging up on me, partly because the friend had used similar language and actions on my blog the last time she disagreed with me on a subject.
Anyway, I immediately put up a wall, became defensive, felt as if I were being harassed and spied upon here, in my public yet very private space.
Plus, this person had put me in the position of having to either pretend I didn't know who she was or confront her. I didn't pretend, but I didn't exactly confront her, either. Until it became clear that she was being nasty, spiteful, deliberately deceitful and self-serving. I finally confronted my friend via e-mail and found, to both my relief and dismay, that she'd known nothing about this interaction. To my relief, because this person has meant so very much to me, but to my dismay, because my letter really should have been sent to her daughter, and my words were distressing to my friend.
The result was an e-mail from the daughter, telling me that she had been testing the waters for depth and found none, that my blog is "hokey," implying that I "lay [my] problems out to the world at large" and accusing me of being "provincial enough to not realize that in this century, distances aren't a barrier to families who live in different states? "
I'd already spent a week and a half frustrated over how to handle this deceit and hubris, and when this letter came, I was devastated. Further more, this person, who insisted that I can't enter into sane debate and that I must have the last word (though I never blocked her ability to comment anonymously on my blog and always responded to her comments) blocked my e-mail so that I wouldn't be able to respond to her accusations and insults. Of course there are ways around this. I could have e-mailed her from other addresses or made up a new e-mail address and identity, like she did, but I just don't operate that way.
Besides, I didn't see the point of it. I'd failed her little "test" of friendship, but she'd long-before failed mine, the minute I saw that she wasn't brave enough to enter into a relationship using her real name, her real face. She hid behind the mask of deceit and expected me to be sincere. What made her think I'd have wanted a friend like that?
For two days, I seethed. How dare someone walk into my personal writing space and harrass me that way? How dare she put my friendship with her mother on the line with her petty games? How dare she pass judgement on me based on my stream-of-consciousness thought and personal feelings, publicly taking me to task for those feelings, snarling and growling and then dodging out with her tail between her legs? How dare she snipe at me and then deprive me of the one thing that I feel I truly need in order to work out my feelings, the opportunity to write and communicate?
Isn't it amazing how this works? How someone can choose to step into your life, someone who means absolutely nothing to you, and can tear your self-worth down to the ground with no intention of coming to an agreement, of admitting wrongness, of understanding one another? I kept asking myself, why should I care what this person thinks? She's obviously someone I'd never want as a friend. Her values are so very different from mine! Her actions are unthinkable in my opinion! I know people like this, who charge through relationships leaving a path of destruction in their wake. I've been on the receiving end of their hurricanes, have found that they're impossible to deal with because they simply dislike themselves too much to truly care about someone else, and I want no more to do with them
Yet it did bother me. It did tear me down.
I sat down to my computer to write. I wasn't sure where that writing would go, because I was pretty convinced that I was going to discontinue blogging, take the whole blog down and forget about it. Yeah, it's hokey. I know that. But hokey is what I do, so I do it. I've read Anne Lamot and Julia Cameron and I've fought off those little demons on my shoulders, those sadistic critics who say that there are only certain things worth writing, only certain valid feelings worth putting down on paper, only certain acceptable ways to write them. Someone even told me once about their own personal demon, their mother's voice saying, "Don't write down anything you don't want anyone to read when you're dead," and another who burned all of her childhood writings after someone she barely knew told her that all fiction is wrong, a lie, that God disapproves of writing such lies. Each time I hear a story like this, I recognize it for what it is: someone lashing out at another based on their own fear and judgement.
But here I was, sitting at my computer, my writing space, my therapy, and someone I didn't even know, someone I was fairly certain I would never even like who had completely burned the bridge to our friendship, was keeping me from writing.
If you're visiting my blog for the first time, or if you've come here looking for something, testing me for my depth or probing me for friendship-worthiness, or you're looking for someone to judge so that you can feel better about yourself, let me tell you something: I'm not writing this to please or impress you.
I know this may come as a shock, but I write for me and for my family. I write so that we can remember the day we went geocaching, or made bread, or constructed bluebird boxes, so that my kids can read the stories of my childhood, can read the stories of their lives, can find another line of communication with me aside from the daily discussions we have.
And, yes, when I write about my problems, I'm doing it so that I don't have to pay a therapist, and I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm hoping that it will help someone else save some money, too.
But I don't write this stuff for you.
I thought about all of this when I sat down to write, but I just couldn't force my thoughts out of my head and onto the keyboard. Too angry, I guess. So I opened my e-mail instead, albeit cautiously, because I expected another e-mail from the sniper, and I really didn't want to come under attack again.
Instead, what I read was this from a young mother I knew when she was just a young girl:*
"I hope this is your e-mail, I did a search for your name and found this e-mail address.
I was thinking about you because I've been discussing birth options with a pregant friend.
As you might remember, I had homebirths with my babies (the last one a beautiful water birth!). I've had to defend my choice for the last 3 years to various people who just don't understand 'Why you would want a natural birth when you could have a pain-free one?'
I suppose you think I'm strange for writing you, but I have thought of you over the past couple of years. When you had one of your babies I remember you were at my parents' church and had your less than week-old with you and heard that you'd had her at home. At the time, I thought it was by accident, or something odd. I had no idea I'd be the "odd" one just a mere 3 years later!
I wish we'd been closer in age, and maybe we could have been great friends. It would be nice to know that someone in my "previous" life didn't think I was nuts.
Wishing for like-minded friends..."
I sat back, amazed. Here was someone who was looking for me, sought me out, was very clear and sincere about her intentions. She wanted like-minded friends. No hiding behind a mask of fear or judgment, just issuing an honest appeal. How refreshing.
And then, BOOM! I heard the sound of the fireworks in the distance. I pulled back the cupboard door and it was only then that I saw the light. I suppose that's what it takes sometimes to get my attention.
And yet, it saddens me to admit that the light of this appeal for friendship was dimmed by the boom of my sniper's sharp blows. Friendships? Who needs 'em! Why would I take my tender, fragile spirit and venture into that dangerous territory of friendship exploration? I've been misunderstood too many times, rejected and dismissed before I was even given a chance. People are just too ready to slap a label on another person, write them off as someone with whom they wouldn't be able to relate. I remember a friend saying to me one time that she had been approached by a young woman looking for a friend and she just had to tell the young woman that she was at a stage in her life where she simply didn't need any more friends. I remember thinking how unwise, how calloused, that sounded.
But here I was feeling just that way.
I left the monitor and sat on my front porch, watching the colorful sky show with my family. My sniper had criticized my home; I'd had the audacity to build my imposing house on the spot where she once lay watching clouds above her head. She'd rejected me before she'd even known me, and here I was feeling rejected, the joy stolen from me, not even able to appreciate these lights in the sky that we'd looked forward to in the early stages of our house planning.
I won't wrap this up neatly, like a half-hour long sitcom or a country song with a nice hook. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, and I certainly haven't healed. I'm keeping people at an arm's length. It's only by the grace of God, the grief that overwhelmed me and the phone call from my mother-in-law admonishing me to write that I'm here at this keyboard now, writing in a blog that came dangerously close to being completely deleted.
So, I'll just reiterate. Sometimes the booms are so loud that they distract me, and others, from the light.
Have you ever been a sonic boom in someone's life? Have you any idea how loud that boom can be? How it can drown out their peace? Have you been so intent on being heard that your light is secondary or even barely visible? That it even overpowers the light of others?
And if anyone has ever boomed into your life, have you allowed their noise to destroy you, or have you let it be the kind of thing that draws your attention to the bright and lovely lights of your life?
Lord, may I tread lightly today. May I learn from my pain and hold each tender, vulnerable spirit as if it were my own. And may I forgive those who haven't learned how damaging their boomng words can be and instead look toward Your perfect Light.
*I've edited her note for clarity and to protect her privacy.
