Tables & Floors

“So, how was your day?”

Uh. I don’t know what to say. It feels like I always respond the same way: Things are busy. Life is busy, I, uh, don’t have much else to say – “You are the most free to just be here. To just be. I care about you and your day, but you don’t have to explain to me the things you haven’t had time to process yet. Take your time. Just be here, together. The food is ready. It’s time to eat.”

Others wiser than me have held studies and found that regularly sharing meals with loved ones has a positive effect on development and relationships and sense of self. I am a woman just under twenty-five years of age and while my math isn’t exact, I would wager I have spent years of my life around tables. Our family tradition may as well be lingering, or our family sport, and we are all masters by now, each having invested our ten thousand hours. It is a legacy I am grateful to carry with me.

However, if social media is any indication, life as a beginner adult can be utterly lonely, full of big questions and no set answers and all this intense desire to make something of yourself while being dearly aware of your own insufficiencies and lack of experience. We all want to make the world better, don’t we? But how that translates into daily, practical things is where we find the rub. Investing in ethical business practices, recycling, calling senators, voting, reading stories by underrepresented people to be better informed is all good, but the weight of the pain and grief and tragedy in the world is still much. It sits heavy on minds and spirits staring ahead into days that look changeless despite our efforts. So where does that leave us? In need of respite and hope and friendship.

Over the last few years, tables and floors are the spaces where I have been met with genuine friendship, friendship which carries the same beneficial qualities as healthy family life. I am the youngest sibling in my family and stepped into adulthood as one of the youngest people in my circles as well. Whether in church, work, or life at the community theatre, I often felt my age, or rather, my lack of it. By grace, coming at life young and open has been for my good, for I have been seen and lifted up by others wiser than me, daily. And that is a continual grace.

Tables first, they are more familiar. I was a fresh twenty-one and just returning to Waco from my last summer worked at a family camp in the Texas hill country when the children’s pastor at my church said I should go to a certain young adult lifegroup. One of the leaders had been my lifegroup leader three years ago, when I was a wee freshman at Baylor, and the other I had heard only good things about, so I agreed. I met with one of the leaders at a coffee shop and she shared with me the vision for the group: To regard one another through the lens of Christ, to purposefully know one another in relation to His redemption and call each other up. May sound lofty and daunting at first, but as a person who just wanted to be deeply known, I felt this lifegroup would be the one for me. Indeed it is.

The living room we meet in now is different than the first, and the second, and will be different again in not too many months. The people I share meals with now on Sunday evenings are largely not the people who took in a fresh-out-of-college Faith. But it is deep family still because the goal has not changed: We seek to honor each other and to keep our eyes on Jesus and His purposes, and we do so without pretense. There is no space for performance or masking in our time together. Silence? Sure. Share in your time, but there is no need to hide the heavy things, for we are a family committed to one another. We eat good food, we laugh, we play games, we worship, we dance, and we are the most free to just be together. We are all growing into pro-lingerers, regardless of enneagram number or natural tendencies.

I’ve found pride falls away around the table. Partly because some meals you cannot eat in a flattering way, and partly because it is counter to the purpose of being with people you love. Pride sets up imagined pedestals, while a table puts everyone on level ground. There is a health in this community that is grace, too, because Lord knows we all have our stubborn, sticking spots and somehow we have the patience and discernment to call out of falsehoods, in love, to keep each other in check. Somehow. (The somehow is the Holy Spirit, let’s be real.) We don’t take the standard “breaks” during holidays or summers because frankly we like being together. And perhaps this sounds ridiculous, or perhaps you also know: Friends who are family are the people you hold tight to, especially in the seasons when you want to tuck into yourself and back away. We need family to keep us from spiraling in isolation in the hard days, hard weeks, hard months. So it is best to be with family, even when you have nothing to give.

Floors now. Less bright and fun. The word humiliating comes to mind, but humbling is better because it is stripped of the connotation of shame. My minutes and hours spent sitting on floors and talking, raw and unmeasured, over the last few years have been rich, in hindsight. Some of them were lighter minutes. Finally catching up with the people I live with at the best spot in the house, the cold kitchen floor, an easy memory to bring back to mind. Shedding snotty tears of frustration and fear of inadequacy sitting on the concrete floor of a bathroom stall at work is a little more touchy, a little more dim. Or it would be, if I had not been so taken care of in that moment by a woman just a few years older than myself, a patient friend who had been there herself and was there for me in my moment, not put off by my tears. “Go ahead and cry. I have time for you. We can take all the time you need. Here is a tissue. I’m going to pray for you now.” It was a profoundly encouraging moment for me, having someone I admire be present with me in my struggle and not negate the weight of it, and not let me sit alone in it either.

Over-commitment and under-rest and distance from the friends like family and hormonal imbalances and spiraling thoughts and emotions and my own expectations for myself were just a few notable factors that had me again in a bathroom stall, sitting in the wooden chair, trying to breathe, but thinking on repeat, “I can’t calm down. I can’t calm down.” A new coworker came in, she knew the toll of a body not working as it was meant to, but I still could not calm down, so she called in special ops. “Do you trust me? Take off your shoes, your socks. Sit down. Put your feet on the ground. Your palms. Breathe. Be aware of the stability. Be grounded. Breathe. You can keep crying. It’s ok. Breathe. Settle. Breathe. Feel the steadiness of the ground. Deep breaths. Now. Up we go. Have you eaten? Then here, have my food. How can I lighten this load for you? Will this help? How are you feeling now? Ok? Ok. Keep breathing.” Met again on the floor in the throws of confusion and anxiety and not made to feel small for my breaking. That is how Jesus met broken people in the gospels, and how Jesus met my broken self through my coworkers and friends.

Tables and floors are the spaces for face-to-face relationship and vulnerability and accountability, but I would be remiss if I did not also note the importance of advocates, holding things together behind the scenes. These people intercede, they fight mighty battles through prayer, which is action, and in tangible ways offer support. They are like the legs of table, or a well-crafted foundation, steady. Advocates saw the potential in me when I felt useless and inadequate, and they refused to give up on me. They refused to let me give up on myself. “You add value. You always have a place. You do good work. You are always welcome here.” Healing words to hear in the midst of chaos, when I was my own worst accuser. When I look at Jesus, when I look at God’s relationship with His chosen people, when I look at Holy Spirit in me, I realize I should not be surprised to hear them. Grace never is earned. Grace is not merited by performance, but given in love through relationship. I have a mighty advocate in the throne room of Heaven and He works well through His children who are faithful in advocacy and intercession, those who never ask for thanks or recognition.

I suppose this reflection is a thank you note of sorts, to everyone who has shared a seat at a table or a spot on the floor with me when I was bad company. You looked like Jesus in those times, and I am grateful for your presence and persistence. I hope you are met with genuine love at your tables and on your floors, too. I pray you are supported by intercessors who tenaciously see the best in you despite your shortcomings. May we each be the friend who sees others in low days and sits and waits and prays and looks to the Comforter for aid. May we cling tightly to each other and make space to breathe in the heaviness of the days we are in. And may we make space to laugh and to eat together.