the accidental bohemian

I once had a dream in which I was driving a car late at night through the woods on a narrow dirt road.  There were two other people with me. The person closest to me I knew well and could see very clearly. I knew she was quite ill. She was holding a bowl in her lap because she felt she was going to be sick. The second person, on the other side of the first, was a bit farther from me, hazy in appearance. I had a vague idea of his identity but I was not fully aware of who he was.

We arrived at an old abandoned house. Inside there were three rooms.

The room we were in was in the center of the house. It was large and well lit. I could see every part of it. It was very clean and uncluttered. It felt warm and inviting.

I then got up and walked into the second room off to one side. The lights were off, I could not see it very clearly, but I could tell it was cluttered, filled with many possessions.

There was a young man, an old lover, in the bed sleeping. I put on two bras, picked up a small statue and then left the room.

The third room was on the other side of the main room and the door was closed. There was light coming from beneath the door and movement inside casting shadows on the floor. I was frightened of whatever was moving inside. This room was very mysterious.

When I woke up, the meaning of the dream was clear. The three people symbolized my complete being. I was the body. But the girl next to me that I knew, that I saw clearly, she was my soul. And she was very ill. The man that was further from me, hazy, less known, he was my spirit.

The house also symbolized my whole being. The main room, well lit, well seen and understood. Clean and well maintained. My body.

The second room, dark, but still visible, with an old lover in the bed, clutter everywhere, an idol, and a need to cover myself up intimately. This was my soul.

And the third room, again the one I could not see inside, the one that was foreign, closed, unknown to me. The one that had unknown things moving about inside, things that even frightened me. This was my spirit.

At the time of this dream I had spent a great deal of time getting to know my body, cleansing and healing physically. A fair amount of time getting to know my soul. But my spirit was still almost a complete mystery to me then.

When we desire to heal, we are desiring purification. We are desiring to clean up things that are in states of disorder and chaos. Things that are dirty and toxic. And we must understand the whole person we are… or we will never fully heal. An otherwise healthy body with cancer in just one part is still a body whose life is in danger. One part overlooked can still mean a very serious life threat. For it is the neglected parts of us that are most likely to quietly fester into disease of some sort.

But here is where it gets fun, for those of you who don’t even know where to start.

Every part is so connected to the others, so affected by the others, that you will see a purification of the soul suddenly heal the body. A purification of the spirit suddenly heal the soul. A purification of the body suddenly uplift the spirit. A change in diet affect mental health. A change in thought affect digestion. It is amazing. Simple purifications with huge life altering effects.

The body is easy to understand. It is visible. It is touchable. You can see the actual ingredients of the actual things you put on it and in it. You can see the actual visible results of making changes.

The soul is a bit trickier. A bit more abstract. It is not visible except in the thoughts and emotions we express. The things that it ingests are less easy to decode, they do not come with an ingredient list. They come in many unexpected forms. A mark on the soul, a toxin ingested by the mind or the emotions is much harder to detect. We need to learn the language of our souls, learn to see when they need certain things, when they need to be protected from other things, when something icky needs to be pushed out… and how.

And the spirit, this strange locked room. This mysterious entity. This breath, this electrical energy that moves through you making you live…

We will learn about every part that makes up our whole person. We will learn how to see them, how to feel them, how to speak their language, how to detect when something toxic is present, how to find the most life-giving forms of nourishment.

The body must be purified so you can heal.

The soul must be purified so you can heal.

The spirit must be purified so you can heal.

And the result will be a person bursting with life. Radiating beauty from every corner, intention, movement and wrinkle. With the ability to love and be loved and connect deeply. Because this ability is the foundational result of true health and happiness.

If I had to narrow healing down to one word it would be Purification.

When I found myself at the bottom. My bottom. The place that made me turn around. The place that was so dark and so horrid and so unpleasant that I stopped and said NO. I am not going any further. I am turning the other way… At this place, I was living the opposite of a purified life.

Nearly everything that surrounded me was dripping with death. Nearly everything I consumed was either toxic or completely empty. Everything I thought was negative and angry and painful and evil.

When it comes to purifying your life, it is hard to know where to start. I know. And when it comes to your individual healing journey, it will be as customized to you as your fingerprint.

Mine began with the mind. I daresay everything must.

I remember the day. It is burned into me. It will be a part of me forever.

That day.

It was sunny. Warm for March.

I was sitting on the floor of my best friend’s apartment because I was homeless. I was hungry. I had a box of white rice, a loaf of white bread, and a jar of peanut butter from the food shelf that had to last me the entire week. I was listening to Ween and writing in a notebook I stole from my mother-in-law’s house. I have no idea where I got the pen.

My three year old boy was at her house. You could say, I stole the notebook, she stole the boy. But that isn’t really fair. The truth is, I lost him. I was self-destructing. And he needed to be protected from such an event. The self-destruction of a mother. So that is where he was.

My husband was divorcing me. He had moved in with the ex-wife of one of his close friends. Ex-friend as it quickly became.

She was lovely in a safe and secure sort of way. A way I had never ever been. She had shoulder length straight hair in a natural mid-tone color. She had large white teeth. She was pretty. I remember going to her wedding. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to wear white to a wedding. When we got to them in the congratulatory line, I didn’t know how to act. I was never around his friends. He never introduced me, just let me dangle off to his left somewhere. I didn’t know these people. When I got to her I awkwardly shook her hand too hard and too loudly declared that I was their friend’s wife. She had pulled her hand away like it burned her. I just didn’t know how to be pleasant. I just didn’t know.

So my husband was gone. With another woman. My son was gone. With another woman. The reason I was in my best friend’s apartment was because my boyfriend at the time had grown tired of taking care of me while I was helpless and negative and depressed. He dropped me off there and drove away.

My best friend and her boyfriend were hiding in their bedroom, smoking pot. I could smell it coming out from underneath the door all hours of the day and night. They couldn’t stand to be around me anymore either.

My parents were not in the picture at all. They were always the tough love sort. My mother was taught to swim by a father who tossed her into the pool at the age of six months old. This actually works. But this is the type of parent she became. She just let me flounder on my own with little help and support. She felt this was the best way for me to learn and build strength. Again, it worked.

I was at the lowest point of my life.

Insufferable to be near even by the people that loved me the most.

Then there were the legal powers that be. The system that was trying to rehabilitate me. I was anxiously awaiting entry of an unknown date into a drug treatment facility. For marijuana use, of all things. They didn’t understand that the marijuana was a safer medicine for me at the time than any of the pharmaceutical garbage they were always cramming down my throat. That it was what had kept me alive. That without it during my explosive gangrenous marriage things would have been much much worse. I had quit several times before only to realize that a sick person, a very very sick person, needs medicine. But this type of medicine was unapproved. Not allowed. It was easy for me to quit. But I awaited treatment, because I was being forced to, but also because there I would be welcomed and have a bed and they would feed me. It sounded like paradise at the time.

I was completely alone. Abandoned and forsaken by everyone, even publicly, at court hearings that announced to large rooms filled with people who did not know me one bit, that I was a low-life who wasn’t worthy of motherhood. I wasn’t just abandoned and rejected by all of my family and friends, but by an entire system of local government. Groups of people who looked down their noses at me. Young girls who had to watch me pee into a cup every week. A social worker who hated the people she worked with and got me confused with other cases every single time she represented me in a court hearing, making wild untrue claims about me that never existed, but I was not allowed to speak to defend myself. A guardian ad lidem whose job it seemed was to make sure I never saw my son again.

And the truth was, I was a very good mother. My son was more advanced than most children I have ever known due to the time and effort I put into his development. I taught him everything. I read to him for hours every day. I showed him how to do everything, I talked to him about everything, like he was a person. I made sure he was in as safe and secure a bubble a boy with broken parents can ever be in. I was just broken. And once everyone started leaving me I broke more and more until one day there was enough of a reason to take him away.

She is emotionally unstable.

She smokes pot all day.

And so there I was on that warm sunny March day. Sitting on the floor of my best friend’s apartment, across the hall from the one I had shared with my husband only months before. Literally, my old door was four steps from hers. A physical reminder every day of what I had lost.

And I was writing in this stolen notebook. I was journaling. And this is where my first purification came. It was a powerful event of the mind that swept through me like a wind. It was divinely breathed into me, I am sure of it, but it was also a very conscious choice. To quit pitying myself and start thinking something that would help me. I decided this was the point where I would finally turn around and start grabbing at life with all my might, because there was nothing else left.

This wind came so forcefully into my mind that everything around me changed at once.

And it was just one thought.

One positive thought that overtook my toxic bleeding soul and made the day seem brighter and full of joy.

My son… is ALIVE.

My son.

Is.

ALIVE. 

This one thought was life to me when everything around me and in me was toxic. This one thought saved me, changed everything. It was the first pure thing I had consumed in a very very long time.

I sat on the floor laughing and crying as quietly as I could, saying over and over again, he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive. And I will have him back. He is not lost forever like the children of so many parents. He did not drown in a pool or get kidnapped or lost in some terrible tragedy. He is safe and being cared for while I find some healing. And then I will have him back.

Excerpts from my journaling on that beautiful sunny day when everything in my mind changed and the strength and power of joy overtook me…

I was admitted to a treatment center the following week. I jumped through all the hoops (none of which were helpful in the slightest at rehabilitating me, unless you count severe annoyance as a character building situation). No, I had to rehabilitate myself, despite the fatally flawed system that made it much harder at every turn.

One year and four months later, my four and a half year old boy was sitting in the backseat of my car.

It was the first time we were alone together since the day he was taken. The first time I was given permission in sixteen months to take him somewhere. We were going to a park nearby for a couple of hours. Then I had to return him to his home. And as we were pulling out of the driveway, he said, Is it just you and me mommy? Just you and me?

The wonder in his tone said it all. We had not been allowed to be mother and son, doing regular mother and son things since shortly after his third birthday. We had only seen each other for an hour and a half twice a week in cold unwelcoming county headquarters while a woman watched from nearby writing down everything I said and did and sending copies to multiple overseers.

He was a completely different boy now. He was still very advanced for his age in his language and emotional maturity but his development had slowed while he was gone, partly because of the trauma of losing me and partly because no one else was as good with him as I was. No one else put the time into him that I did. Nurturing him and teaching him and reading to him. No one talked to him the way I did.

And I was a completely different person too. I was beaten down in the name of treatment and rehabilitation and had to rise up against it over and over again during those long months. I suffered humiliations, rejections, and letdowns during that time that I could never ever fully recount. But I fought like a little hatching creature. And somehow I made it out. And I was much much stronger.

Something was torn away.

Ripped away.

Removed.

Lost.

It hurts.

Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Sometimes so much you feel you may not be able to survive the wreckage. Your soul might be bleeding to death.

It is so easy to feel forsaken.

Cursed.

It is so easy to see a dark cloud looming where favor once was.

The pain and the agony and the fear of having something torn away. The questions we must ask God.

Why.

Why.

Why.

We must ask.

We must.

There is no other way. Everyone must ask. And it’s ok. He wants to have that conversation with you. Ignore anyone who says it is not okay to question God. Every good parent welcomes questions. Especially of such importance.

But do not be fooled into thinking you are cursed. Unloved. Fallen out of favor. This is not God’s back turned your way. To lose some things is simply a tragedy. Sometimes things just break and fall away in this world. They just do.

But everything taken has made me stronger.

Everything lost has made me more free.

Everything stripped away has made me healthier.

I see that those who remain comfortable never become strong.

Those who do not have things regularly purged from their lives never become healthy.

And those who never lose things never go on the hunt for freedom. For heaven.

The strongest people I know are the ones who have suffered the most

Blessed are the poor in spirit

The most free people I know are those who have lost much

Blessed are those who mourn

The most healthy people I know are those who have been humbled

Blessed are the meek

The most effective people I know are those who have fasted

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven

they shall be comforted

they shall inherit the earth

they shall be filled

they shall obtain mercy

they shall see God

they will be called sons of God

Update: 2/16/17 I know this post is not very clear. This is because it was written before I was ready to talk in detail about what it refers to. This post was written shortly after my very first (and hopefully only) surgery. I had to have an ovary removed that had grown large and obtrusive after years of a silent cyst growing inside of it without my knowledge. Even after more than ten years of doing everything in my power to become healthy, still this had happened. Fallout from my body’s earlier years of neglect and abuse, years of parabens and birth control and other terrible things a woman should never subject her body to, but I didn’t know that then.

This post was an expression of the grief we feel when something like this takes place. The trauma we must process when we realize that we are not always safe. That even when we do everything we can to turn our lives around there may still be consequences down the road from things we did long ago. That God doesn’t always prevent terrible loss and tragedy. This was an exploration of the soul that must question God when something terrible happens. If we do not then this question gets lodged inside of us and turns foul, turns into suspicion and anger and bitterness. We cannot let that happen. No matter how much faith we have in him, we still must question. Because we will feel forsaken. Even Jesus himself felt forsaken by God in the end when he was dying. It is vital we allow ourselves to ask and to grieve. It is completely appropriate, even necessary to do so.

I had a hard time with the notion that part of my body was missing. That I will never again be physically whole. I had a tiny glimpse into the type of grief involved with losing something much more visible or useful, like a hand or legs or eyesight. After all I still had one ovary left. It was’t even that terrible of a loss when you really think about it. Oh yeah, I got an extra one of those anyway…

But it was. It was hard to make my brain understand that this piece of my body, that had always been there, that my son’s egg may have even come from, was now gone. I still feel it there. Phantom twinges and aches. As if my brain still thinks it is there.

I was not the same after that surgery for the following year. A little bit of the light went out of my eyes. Though usually teeming with hope and joy and excitement, I became slightly sullen and lacked excitement for my future. My identity took a little bit of a hit as I had to suddenly reprocess who I was. It was all jolting to say the least.

But the pain I felt most acutely was being humbled. The scalpel to my soul, cutting out pride. The feeling of being humbled I must say is one of the most horrendous and wonderful feelings I have had. I felt broken. Not like a smashed vase, but like a horse. I remember sitting in front of family and weeping and telling them I was simply broken. Pride was cut right out of my heart and it hurt like hell and it felt amazing. Sometimes we think if we do everything right then certain tragedies cannot touch us. And this, my dear friends, is exactly why these things must sometimes happen. It was one of the most incredible changes to my character I have had in a long time.

All of this reminded me that even when we seek health with all our hearts as a lifestyle, we are not always on a steady incline. The soul will be wounded over and over again as we age. Our bodies can still suffer sudden misfortune or residual effects of long past poor choices, or genetic afflictions. It is our job to learn how to properly grieve so that our souls can purge the toxin of grief and trauma and find the light again every single time.

I have the pleasure of being included in a mass church prayer chain email because I am related to the person who runs it. There’s no way out now. Save yourself, it’s too late for me.

I can easily say that I am a person with few pet peeves. I enjoy a carefree live-and-let-live life.

I can also easily say that if I let myself think about all the stupid things people do then I am a controlling judgmental psychopath. (Really, it’s a choice every day what I will allow my mind to do and what I won’t)

Anyway, these emails give me urges toward poisoning, strangulation and body-hiding creativity I haven’t felt since I was married to my first husband.

Instead I think I’ll channel it into a blog post.

There are two things that self-respecting Christians need to stop doing immediately. Well there are way more than that, but I’m going to address two today.

Number one:

Stop trying to manipulate God with your prayers. Stop praying for your own will.

Just stop it.

Seriously.

What are we? Kindergarten Christians? What is this? Fast food religion?

Jesus made it clear how we should pray.

Not my will…

But yours…

I wish I had a mango-a-go-go Jamba Juice every time someone told me what magic words to pray so they could have what they want. It would at least ease the pain a little.

Don’t get me wrong. God is a good father and so we are not only welcome to ask him for things, he likes it. But for the love of God… LITERALLY… don’t forget that your everyday prayers are not supposed to be about you and what you want out of the deal.

God is a not a genie in a lamp.

You are not placing an order at Taco Bell.

You are definitely not the best judge of what is best for you in the long run.

Not my will…

 But yours…

This should be our prayer every day of our lives. Do you have any idea what would happen to your life if you prayed this every time??!

Instead of:

God please let me win

please let me have what I want

please take away all the consequences of my actions without me having to change the stupid things I am doing that are causing them

Just.

Stop it.

Not my will…

 But yours…

Even to DEATH this was Jesus’ prayer. Most Christians I know wouldn’t pray this if their landscaping was at risk, let alone their lives. But the things this mindset would do to enrich your life and the lives of everyone around you (especially those on your prayer chain email list) because it would protect you from the idiotic short-sightedness that is the human way of reasoning. And it would show you what a real relationship with God can actually be like. One that is developing more mature faith. One that stops being afraid. Stops trying to control things. Stops believing that your comfort and happiness are more important than your character and God’s big picture story.

Okay I know I may be coming on a little strong, but cold delivery is simply my way. Truly I have a very strong desire to see people thrive and to see God exalted. That is what all this is about.

God’s will done.

God exalted.

God glorified.

And no matter what you lose, no matter what goes wrong in your life, no matter who hurt you, no matter what kinds of fears you struggle with, if his will is done in your life instead of yours, YOU WILL THRIVE IN WAYS YOU NEVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE. Because his will includes the best possible outcome for everything. Including you (he’s that good, really).

You have high blood pressure? Don’t just pray for him to make it come down, pray for his will in your health. Then he might show you how he created your body to thrive and heal itself with new lifestyle choices. You want the house but everything is going wrong and the closing date keeps getting pushed back? Don’t just pray that you get the house, pray for his will in where you live. He might be trying to save you from a money pit or move you across town for a specific reason. Having trouble in your marriage? Don’t just pray that God will show your spouse the errors of his or her ways. Pray for his will in your marriage. Maybe he’ll show you how to honor someone else and the love will start pouring out at you in response.

Well I said I was going to talk about two things but I feel a very strong resolve right now and so I am going to stop right here. I’ll save the second thing for another day. And I am going to end with the way Jesus taught us to pray. Every day this should be the way we pray.

Put it in your own words.

Make it mean something to you.

Write it down and tape it all over your house, your office.

Ask him for things, sure, he delights in the requests of his children, but remember ultimately we need to learn to desire his will above our own. Even Jesus said, If it’s possible God, please don’t let me die like this, BUT… in the end your will over mine. This is the only way we will find true happiness in the end anyway. The stuff we think we want never ends up being that great.

My father in heaven

You are holy holy holy

Let your kingdom take its place here in my world

Let your will be done in my life in the lives of my friends in the lives of my family in our world like it is in your world

Please provide what I need today

Forgive me 

Help me forgive them

Help me avoid temptation

Help me avoid evil

It’s your kingdom

It’s your power

And it’s your glory

Forever.

[Update on this post. I have somewhat recently discovered that I am an Aspien woman, meaning I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Once I have taken more time to process and study this situation, I will write more about it.]

I am socially handicapped. Awkward and misunderstood are in my genetics. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is what my brain and mouth team up against me to do regularly. They have been in cahoots for my slow death by humiliation since as far back as I can remember. When in a deep one-on-one conversation with someone I click with I have grown to do quite well, but I have trouble understanding people during simple exchanges (and I am quite sure they rarely understand me) as if I have completely missed the rules of small-talk.

I have always had a certain level of envy for the socially at ease. The ones who banter effortlessly. The ones who easily meet people and know what to say. This post is not for you. Stop reading it right now and just go talk to someone who thinks you are wonderful.

This post is for the one who spilled their drink on someone’s shoe, then proceeded to talk for too long about something your cat did and laugh too loud at something that wasn’t meant to be a joke. This is for the ones who stare blankly at people when an answer is required and blurt out something unrelated to the topic when someone else is still talking. You know who you are.

I have accumulated these tips by way of observation and adult practice. When used correctly they work.

#1 Ask questions. (Pertinent simple ones). The number one tip I have found for navigating the murky waters of small talk is to be interested in learning things about the person you are talking to. Don’t talk about yourself (or your kids or pets). Instead be interested in them. The more interesting you appear to think they are, the more wonderful they will begin to think you are. Starting with a simple where do you live? Or where are you from? leads beautifully into mention of family or job which then leads to How many kids? How long have you been married? How did you meet your wife? etc. Or What do you do? How long have you done that? etc. Asking questions and listening, riveted, to the answers has been the number one thing to move me from complete failure to a certain level of satisfaction in social interaction. This leads beautifully into tip number two:

#2 Listen much more than you talk. There are countless proverbs in every religion that outline the importance of this tip. If you listen more than you talk, you will be considered wise. People who talk too much are often thought to be fools regardless what they are saying. At least in the beginning, when you are still learning how to talk to people, keep them talking by way of Tip #1 and listen intently. If they turn the topic onto you, answer simply and ask them another related question. In time you will find a good balance, but in the beginning it is important to prevent your mouth from messing up the interaction that is taking place. Just listening and nodding occasionally goes a very long way.

#3 Don’t be afraid to ask them to repeat themselves right away when you have missed something. I have launched into a strange answer on a partially understood question too many times. Once recently I was in a loud room where an acquaintence walked up to me, greeted me, and asked me a question. I did not hear the question, but assumed it was the general and courteous how are you? I began to answer that I was quite well, when suddenly his facial expression paired with my growing fear that he had asked me something different made me stop mid-sentence, lean an ear toward him and say Pardon? The timing was so off that he looked at me like I was crazy because he hadn’t said anything, I had been the one talking. Yep that sucked. (Ultimately he had asked me how I was. I should have just went with it. You win some, you lose some.)

#4 Relax and remind yourself that you are okay. At the beginning I had to regularly remind myself to be at ease during small-talk. When you have suffered enough blunders in a certain area of experience, you begin to naturally respond with a kind of post-traumatic stress. Your body tenses and stress hormones release and this leads to becoming too loud or too aggressive or too frightened to create a comfortable setting for your small-talk partner. Take some deep breaths, lower your shoulders, lower your volume, tell yourself you are okay. I have seen it and done it too many times. Being so nervous about being perceived as crazy that I end up acting crazy.

#5 Don’t forget who you are. In the end, these are all tips to enhance your character and personality and smooth out your interactions, not to pretend you are someone else or be like someone else. That would be counter-productive and terrible. These tips are simply some things I have picked up along the way that have helped me to move through the early stages of friendship as well as general acquaintanceship and have actually strengthened my personality- because when you are at ease with yourself and you are confident about interacting with others, your quirks can be free to enhance your experience instead of harming it. People love quirky people. Once the main social mistakes we make have been refined we can just be enjoyed and enjoy people.

I have been taking care of my neighbor’s cats for the past week and a half. I’m not a cat person but I am open on a case by case basis. Their small female hid mostly, unsure of the entire ordeal, coming out only to eat and receive a few cheek rubs out of desperation. But her large male brother, every day I went over, would plop his sizable mass right onto my lap and proceed to purr like a lawnmower and shed on me like he was making up for lost time. But due to this behavior I very quickly developed a bond with him. I would pet and scratch him (and then lift my fingers up every few strokes to blow the hair away) while trying to read one of the magazines on the coffee table, for an hour or two a day.

Friendship is a phenomenon to me. It can be so random. You just click with someone sometimes. But for some reason, as adults, we no longer come right out and say I like you. Do you want to be my friend? the way we used to when we were kids.

No, as adults we become covert. We feel the chemistry, or a connection or we are simply fascinated or intrigued by someone. We want to be this person’s friend. Meaning we want to see them on a regular or semi-regular basis, sometimes in group activities and sometimes one-on-one.

Launch Mission Make-a-Friend:

• Have at least one, but usually more than one, memorable conversation together in a group setting.
• Make casual invitation to have coffee sometime. Adding a drink and a planned one-on-one meeting bumps you up to the next level, while adding the exchange of phone numbers.
• After this, there is a tentative feel-out period to see if the resulting interest is mutual, if more one-on-one time is desired, and if so, how much and how often.
• If you both desire to be around one another on a regular or semi-regular basis, then there has been made a friendship.
• After this there is maintenance.

I have spent some time analyzing what it is that causes me to be effortlessly drawn to some and then completely disinterested in others. Mainly it is personality, of course. For instance, as an intuitive person I desire the depth of fellow intuitives and am bored by the more surface-oriented small-talkers. As a talker I can struggle with those who talk too much and don’t let me in enough. As a free bird I don’t bond well with people who are too serious or uptight. These are obvious.

The one that I have been noticing more lately though is love language. You know, there are five different ways of showing and receiving love according to Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages:

• Words of Affirmation
• Physical Touch
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Quality Time

The two at the top for me are words of affirmation and quality time. If you want to hang out with me and tell me how awesome I am I will love you and I will hang out with you and tell you how awesome I think you are. The two at the bottom for me are Gifts and acts of service. I don’t need you to give me anything or do anything for me (except spend time with me and tell me I’m awesome) and I am not drawn to give you gifts or do things for you as a way of showing love. These things are still in my friendships, but they are not paramount to me. Physical touch is stuck in the middle because I can take it or leave it, I’m happy with greeting and parting hugs.

So I have noticed that the friends I have had some trouble bonding with are those who have love languages that are at the bottom of my list. So this friend whose cats I have been taking care of, I have come to realize that one of his top love languages may be acts of service. Have you ever had one of these friends? Where your friendship seems to revolve around their asking you for favors in large quantity? You may feel used or resentful or even like there is no friendship at all. But when I realized that this may be the way my friend feels loved, that maybe people doing favors for him shows him that they are truly his friends, my viewpoint softened. I don’t say yes every time, but I do make an effort.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on friendship today.

Is there a friendship in your life like this? Where maybe a difference in the idea of friendship is causing strain?

Or is there someone to whom you simply want to say, “I like you. Will you be my friend?”

Or do you simply need to get a cat?