Lisa Whelchel’s Book and Thoughts on Religion and Friendship

I decided that I couldn’t be a proper Facts groupie without reading some of Lisa Whelchel’s books. I’m not sure that her series for moms has much for me, so I’m reading Friendship for Grown-ups: What I Missed & Learned Along the Way. It’s good. She and Nancy McKeon are still the closest of friends, although particular matters to do with Facts are not the book’s focus. It is a memoir and discussion of something common to us all: friendship.

Friendship was on my mind this morning, so it was fitting that Lisa’s book was in the backpack I picked up as I left the house. I’ve enjoyed it much more than I expected. The way in which she frames her journey and the lessons she learned have their foundation in her Christian faith, but the lessons and comments on friendship are sound and thought-provoking regardless of faith or lack thereof.

I have a rocky relationship with religion. I was born Catholic, but I left the Catholic Church at the age of six because I was uncomfortable with the part of the Missal in which we said, “We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic church.” I asked my mom if I had to say that when I didn’t really believe it – I believed that everyone who loved God and Jesus were OK even if they did things a slightly different way.

My mom put me in a more liberal church, which I left at eight because of hypocrisy I observed among church members. Since then, my spiritual journey has been my own. My driving philosophy is: “Be a decent person. Acknowledge that you can be shitty. Be better.” That philosophy isn’t all that different from those in many scriptures.

I have probably dismissed people’s opinions because the person is “too into religion,” and if I say, “Some of my best friends are people of faith,” I’d just be underscoring the point. It’s true that I think hollow ritual is too often mistaken for true spirituality; and I believe it’s important to acknowledge that atrocities have occurred in the name of just about every religion. I do not consider myself a religious person, but I also do not consider myself an atheist. I have been trying to be better about judging religion qua religion and seeking more people of faith as allies. I also reserve the right to judge based on political positions that I find abhorrent, even if they’re disguised as “religion.” Your religion can make you feel anything you want. It cannot give you the power to dictate the actions of those who don’t share it.

Regardless of faith, governing principles, or other descriptions of the foundation that guides one’s perception of the world around them, I think you’re likely to agree with the following statement from Lisa’s book:

“Given everyone’s schedules and responsibilities, mercy and grace are a prerequisite for modern friendships.” (90)

She goes on to reprint an e-mail she wrote to a friend early in their relationship:

“I think one of the things we busy women . . . tend to do is not respond at all until we have time for a long conversation or thorough e-mail response. I do think part of what we can learn in this friendship that will probably take trial and error and honesty and mercy is how to balance making time for the relationship because of its eternal value and yet not dismissing the reality that we have to do what we have to do.

I am grateful for your quick responses, but I will trust your heart and intentions when you can’t give one. I hope we find more opportunities to talk on the phone, but I also love the kind of ease in a friendship that can call and the other person say, “I can’t talk now; gotta go.” Click.” (90-91)

That quotation resonates deeply with me. I’ve always been grateful to have dear friends that I can not talk to for months or years, and when we get back on the phone or over lunch or at the bar it’s like we’ve never been apart. I have a couple of friendships in which my friend and I realized that we simply have to schedule phone dates, so we do. I have one very dear forever friend with whom I promised to schedule a phone date, and we haven’t, and maybe we’ll get around to it; others with whom my path crosses fairly regularly (as in at least once a month) and I try to see them if I can but if we miss a few that’s OK too. Within each of these, of course, there are individual variations.

I’m not particularly good at initiating contact, and I own that. I’m super-guilty of what Lisa describes in her letter – waiting until I have the hour or so that I would like to talk to the friend in question to even think about dialing. It gets further complicated when my friends have regular daytime jobs, or when time zones are involved.

I’m thinking of one friend in particular at the moment. After we graduated from law school, we kept in great touch for a period of time. His job had him in court and visiting clients frequently, so he plugged in the hands-free and we chatted while he was in traffic. Then he moved on to a clerkship where multiple time zones separated us and he didn’t have the commuting chat time anymore. Furthermore our habits are different: he’s a morning songbird and I’m a night owl. We have done a terrible job keeping in touch. I know from the Social Medias that he’s moving to the next time zone over, and I hope we’ll be able to communicate more often. Still, it’s practically criminal that we basically haven’t spoken to each other in two years.

It’s my fault: he continually reached out at times that didn’t work out for me and I failed to respond at or with a time that might be better. That’s shitty of me and I don’t blame him for leaving the ball in my court to make sure we stay in contact. I should, and intend to, correct that (as I’m writing this, it’s the middle of the workday for him so I assume it’s a bad time).

While the Social Medias really do help us keep in touch, they also make it too easy to answer the fundamental friendship question of, “Is this person I care about alive and generally well?” We used to call (or God forbid, write) to check in; now we log on and we don’t even have to directly correspond with the person. As Lisa puts it:

“For goodness sakes, we live in Facebook and Twitter times where we communicate in 140 characters or less. I am part of both of these social networks, but it is so easy to think we are staying in touch with friends this way when, in reality, the touch is often while we are simply brushing by them as we are rushing through our busy lives that are too crowded for meaningful contact.” (99)

I have another friend from law school to whom I spoke today. She doesn’t do the Social Medias at all; there has never been a tweet or a Facebook status in her life. After graduation, I knew where she was but I hadn’t spoken to her at all. We exchanged the occasional text. I learned that she’d been through a situation and had moved somewhere I visit regularly, so I tracked her down. Now we keep in what I would consider good touch through text and phone and the occasional visit when I’m in her town and we can work it out. I was in her neck of the woods a few days ago, so I pinged her about getting together. It didn’t work out, but we finally managed to catch up via phone today. I haven’t seen her since the holidays, and we hadn’t spoken since January when she gave me a pep talk before my first hearing. Today, we both had time, and we spoke for an hour and a half. There are a lot of reasons that we had the time, and in her case they’re all bad, but it was nice to be able to speak freely and be done when we were done instead of when we had to get back to work or whatever.

The particular characteristics of a friendship – and the role each friend plays in other friends’ lives – are as unique as the friendship itself. When the circumstances surrounding the friendship change, it’s only natural that the friendship has to change as well. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing; it just is.

In her letter, quoted above, Lisa Whelchel wrote, “I am grateful for your quick responses, but I will trust your heart and intentions when you can’t give one.” Because people make mistakes, the presumption of innocence is an important part of any friendship. Mistakes ought to be discussed and concerns ought to be addressed, but bad intent shouldn’t be assumed.

The parts of Lisa’s book to which I’ve referred in this blog are all within a few pages of each other. I haven’t finished the book yet. I can already recommend it, regardless of whether you share Lisa’s faith. Because of her foundation, she speaks of things as being, for example, guided by Jesus or gifts from God. She might say that God brought me her book at a time when I really needed it. Regardless of whether you describe it as God or serendipity or coincidence or aliens, it is here, and it is timely, and I am grateful for it.