My horse died. One by one my horse friends decided I didn’t make the cut in their busy lives. “I don’t want to have lunch with you,” said one friend. Another was done after I canceled lunch. The others mostly sank in silence. I sat down in front of the pony barns at the Boone County Fair, people driving by with their horses and carriages and started to say how horse people are mean. My friend would have listened if I’d kept talking. But why lay that on her? They aren’t really mean. Just busy. When someone stops doing a hobby, often the friendship fades. And with Tessie dead, a wide river grew between me and the barn where I used to ride. There was a bridge that I didn’t want to cross.
Riding lost its charm. Even though Tessie could bolt for no reason, and rattled me, we had a long relationship of good rides and long talks with friends on the trails. Even though Mrs Horse is more honest, I feel safer driving her than riding. She hears my voice. She has come back to me. I pull her out of the barn and drive around the fields. It’s not so much work as trailering her to the barn. Bruce can share the fun.
But these days I merely scratch Morgen’s back and belly with my curry, her nose curling in pleasure. I pile her hay in the paddock. I see ads for people saying they don’t spend enough time, so the pony is for sale and I wonder if the next place would pay any more attention than the place the pony already knows. I need to find my way back to working with Mrs. Horse. My grief over Tessie has been that wide river, with a bridge I don’t cross even with Mrs. Horse, who calls, looking eagerly over the fence when I come out.
I read memes saying, “Build a circle of friends who are genuine and safe energetically and mature spiritually. Friends who hold space and not animosity. Who are compassionate, not judgmental. Who take time to check on you and your progress. Who grow through life with you, hold you accountable and wish you well.”
Who has all these qualities? Who never slips up and vents or gossips or is just plain grumpy? It seems our culture urges us to shun people we find toxic. But in some ways aren’t we all?
When I’ve been ghosted, my texts not answered, I can be so angry and so hurt and wonder if I should keep playing the silence game or blurt, “How have I offended you?” But I’m too angry to offer the soft answer turning away wrath. I’d only bring grievous words, and we’d all be stirred up. What good would that do? These former friends took up space in my head. You know the kind, where you start thinking about what you would say if given a chance. And again you start speaking your defense in your head. And again. And it has to stop.
I’ve heard counselors’ advice: “You’re not that important.” “It’s none of your business what they think.” “They’re not your tribe.” “It’s not about you. Their plate is full.” “You don’t know what they are suffering, be kind. Be kind.”
So instead of telling them off in my head, I do what I’ve done in the past. I’ve used my hurt as a cue to pray some kind of blessing. Simply, Lord bless them. This breaks up the bad thoughts. Tosses good wishes at the hurt.
Offense rises like a dead thing. Fingers grab my throat. Tears seep.
All the rejection for the last sixteen years opens that loneliness wound. I have shown people who I am and they have walked away because I did not make the cut. But I too I have walked away from good people, good friends because our paths diverged. I got busy.
I reflect on how I’ve been lonely since I was a baby. My mother experienced major losses—her father died, her mother-in-law died, her father-in-law came to live with us and then died, my father’s sister died all in the span of a few years. A neuropsychologist told me that a depressed mother can do more damage to a child than a schizophrenic one. As an adolescent I’d go off into the woods praying, crying to be held. A pain that wasn’t solved until Grad School Sorta Boyfriend made out with me.
I’d buried my parents and brother by the time I was thirty-two. My relatives were too far away to be much comfort. Not going to the barn, the wide river between me and them, the barricaded bridge, rhymed with how I lost my family, my birth family and my relatives in that awful season after my brother died, because I found the barn soon after he died, and felt like I’d gone home. I found friends there.
I’m shocked how these wounds and sorrows and fear rise from something so trivial as having my text ignored.
I finally run my anger and hurt through the Paradox prayer: “Even though I am obsessing and angry I am loved and accepted by God. Even though I am obsessing and angry I love and accept myself. Even though I am obsessing and angry I will trust you God.” I ask Jesus what he thinks because that’s what you do after the Paradox prayer and the answer came, “Shake the dust of your feet. If a village doesn’t receive you, shake the dust.”
Grief and anger and loneliness can whirl together, can call down darkness.
I’ve been reading Albert Rossi’s book, All Is Well. He talks about how his night dreams can leave him unsettled. When he wakes he says, “I can instantly feel shamed and guilty for something I didn’t do, didn’t want to do, and don’t want to do…But God does give me the grace to pray when I am aware of these thoughts, which are basically lies” (31). He urges we remain calm in the middle of strife. And says, “We can repeat without fully comprehending all is well” (32).
I figured after posting about how we might find Paradise here, now, that I’m shaking my fist at the powers of fear that seem to have taken over our world. (Rightly so.) When we do what Albert Rossi urges, “Affirm all is well. Julian of Norwich, in the midst of great suffering, spoke, ‘All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well’” we are defying the powers that want us afraid and outraged.
I repeat the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I pray, “I don’t know how to be a friend.” I find I’m back in beginner’s mind with a skill I should know as a 68-year-old. I have seen how I have botched friendship—given too much advice, focused on someone’s drama when that’s the last thing they want to talk about, just plain been clumsy. And needy. My gosh have I been needy. Or I have listened, not telling my story, defying the rule: I share. You share. People don’t like being asked “how are you?” And sometimes that’s all I have because I don’t remember enough details to ask a good question.
The other day Bruce and I walked the dogs in the half hour after the news and before the Bachelorette. We saw barn swallows swooping and playing, with moves as complicated as a ballroom waltz. Dragonflies threaded their way through their flight. Were they hunting or swinging with the joy of flight? I saw two Monarchs joined together. Maybe they are prepping to fly south. It was a beautiful, magical, joyous sight. Then we heard a roar, loud and frightening like the truck that was burning rubber in front of our house. And it broke the magic. We walked the dogs back to the house.
The next morning one of the “ghost gals” posted a note under a dog picture saying my dog looked lovely. Another one said yes we can have lunch someday. And another one thanked me for a congratulations. None of them are close but it felt good that they dropped a sentence my way. This felt like a kindness from Jesus. Solitude returns. I give thanks for my current good friends.
And yes I’ve been invited back to the barn to ride, so the welcome is there.
I take my morning walk with Omalola. I can hardly believe my eyes. Deer have turned the corner on the neighbor’s corn field. They stop. See me. Pause. Then whirl and bound across the bean field, the beans like high water up to their flanks. I listen to a breeze rattle the corn. I glance down. A drop of dew has caught the sunlight. I could almost pick up a diamond. We walk to the corner where they stood. Omalola stops. Looks at me. Turns to sniff where they stood.
I am taking down the barricade and walking over the bridge. Oh my goodness it’s high over the water, sunlight cups the waves. It rocks in the wind.
Works Cited
Rossi, Albert. All is Well. Chesterton, Ancient Faith. 2020
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