The Friendship That Needs Me Small

Fiona does it in the hallway, before she knocks, and she has been doing it for about six years without knowing she was doing it.

She noticed in February, and the way she noticed was almost funny. She was standing outside Ciara's flat with a bottle of something and a bag, and she caught herself deciding not to mention the thing about work.

Nothing enormous. She had been asked to lead something. It was genuinely good news and she had been carrying it around for two days wanting to tell somebody, and she stood in a hallway and decided, in about a second, not to bring it up.

And then, because she is a person who notices things once she has started, she went through the rest of it on the way home.

She does not mention the running. She does not mention that she has started painting again, ever, at all, in six years. She has an entire second friendship, with a woman from the choir, that she has never once referred to in that flat. She has a tone she uses with Ciara that is about half a step down from her real one.

She loves Ciara. That is not in question and it never has been. Ciara sat with her for four days when her father died. Ciara is funny in a way almost nobody is, and knows every stupid thing about her, and would take a call at three in the morning tonight.

And there is a shape Fiona folds herself into in that hallway, every single time.

She is the closest person to me in the world, and there is a version of me that has never once been in her flat.

And here is where I stop talking about Fiona, because you have your own hallway, and you have a list of subjects you do not bring, and you have never said it out loud because it would sound like a betrayal of somebody you genuinely love.

Let me say the first thing carefully, because it matters more than anything else here: nothing in this is a judgment about your friend. I do not know her and it is not mine to say and you are not going to say anything about her either. What we are looking at is a posture, and the posture is in your body, in a hallway, before a door.

He called her over and made her straight

Let me put the true thing down first, because it is about a body and this has been living in yours.

You are not meant to be folded, and the making straight is not something you achieve by deciding to stand up. There is a scene where Christ meets somebody who has been bent for a very long time, and every action in it is His: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And He laid His hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.Luke 13:12-13

Look at the order of it.

He saw her. She did not come forward, she did not ask, and she does not speak once in the whole passage. He saw a woman who had been bent for eighteen years in a room full of people who had presumably stopped noticing.

Then He called her. She had to cross a room bent, in front of everybody, which is its own kind of thing.

Then He said it before He touched her: you are loosed. The word came first, and the straightening came after, and the straightening is described as something that happened to her rather than something she did. The Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the room you are actually in.

So being made straight is His work and it begins with being seen, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own opinion of anybody, and God's Spirit is not waiting for you to stand up on your own in a hallway.

The folding is not kindness

Now let me be exact about the posture, because as long as it feels like love it will not move.

You have been telling yourself, without words, that the folding is generosity. That not mentioning the promotion is tact. That leaving out the painting is not showing off. That the half step down in your voice is warmth.

Here is the test, and it is a hard one and it is worth it: generosity gives something. What does the folding give her?

It does not give her your good news, which is a thing a friend would want. It does not give her the woman from the choir, or the painting, or the version of you that is at full height. It gives her a smaller person to be with, and she has not asked for that, and she cannot ask you to stop doing something she does not know is happening.

That is the part worth sitting with. She has never been offered the whole of you, and you have been calling the withholding love.

Hear this: you are not owned by this posture, and the shape you were made in is not a threat to anybody. What Christ does with a bent person is call them over and make them straight, out loud, in front of a room. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it a thing you can do in a hallway rather than a thing you understand.

And the practical half, plainly, because a message without it has failed you. Real help exists and none of it is small faith. A counselor is exactly right for a posture six years old, and it is not disloyal to anybody. And here is the small brave thing that may be all this needs: bring one thing. Not a confrontation, not a conversation about the friendship. Just walk in next time and mention the painting, and see what happens, because it is entirely possible that nothing at all does.