Heard from my oldest friend today. She updated me on all of the issues in her life, at least as well as she could. Her 21-year-old son's anger/anxiety issues have gotten the best of him again and now her "coffee table has about a dozen holes in it." Her 14-year-old daughter will be receive an hour of school-mandated therapy each week, but she and her brother are clashing constantly and this causes my friend to have panic attacks. She says she's "reallyreallyreally bad right now and just can't talk."Most disturbingly, she worries about God and why He continues to let her live. In response, I advised that a shrink is one thing and a minister is another, and I sent her a link to the Unitarian Universalist church nearest her. That's the congregation I belong to and, while I still consider myself a devout Christian, I appreciate how UUs' approach life and faith with a maximum of spirituality but a minimum of dogma. Since my friend feels beaten up and under siege a great deal of the time, I think a welcoming and non-judgmental church would be a place to dip a toe back into religion. She needs God in her life and, while I didn't want to lay it on too thick, so do her kids.
The part that felt like a salve was this: "Sorry, dear -- I don't want to dump on you. I just know that you are a safe place to land my neurosis...and I feel incredibly ashamed that I haven't been as good a friend to you as you have always been to me." So she knows, and that's enough for me. I don't feel we need to rehash it. She knows and she values what we have been to one another since first grade.
you are so much a better friend then i could be to her...i admire you for being there for her. i would have told her long ago that i could not deal with the drama in her life!
ReplyDeleteGlad she acknowledges that she hasn't been a great friend back.
ReplyDeleteI hope she is able to heed your advice about getting back in touch with her spiritual side.