Category: friends (Page 1 of 5)

Trust the Chef

Sir Ken Robinson writes, “there are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two groups, and those who don’t.” I, like Brene Brown (I know! Twinsies!), do. I’m aware it’s dualistic and sometimes limiting, but it’s also quick and easy and sometimes a little fun.

So there are those people in the world, who, when they go to a restaurant repeatedly, they order something new. And there are those of us who [do it right and] order the same thing over and over.  When I love something, I keep returning to that satisfaction. Case in point: I’ve only ever had one dish at Macaroni Grill, the Pasta Romano. This was before my body stopped digesting refined white flour, but I told friends that if I were ever to end up on death row and needed to name my final meal, this would be it. (These friends love me, but gave me concerned looks after that statement. What? You haven’t thought about that? I asked.) Now, a quick search of Macaroni Grill’s website tells me that the Pasta Romano is no longer available. Please, a moment of silence. (They didn’t even tell me ahead of time, so that I could get one final taste?! How dare they! What are they, heartless animals?)

Back to the main-ish point: For those of us in the group who re-order over and over, how do you quickly and efficiently order at a new venue, especially when a friend is sharing a captivating story and you’re on limited time? For myself, I look for key words: avocado or the phrase “covered in queso.” I must tell you: this system has yet to fail me.

Yesterday, in an adventure to Northstar Cafe- at which I had previously dined, but I’m by no means a “regular” – I knew I needed food with color (a white potato and a white chicken boob just wouldn’t serve me well) so I limited myself to the salad section, even through there was an entire area of the menu devoted to “wood fired pizzas.” Sometimes I defy my bread-hating body, but yesterday was not that day. Because I’m a rule follower when I believe the rule is for me, I stayed in the salads.

Can we please talk about the Townsfair Salad? I feel like this experience warrants public discussion. Who knew that dates belong in a salad? And, to that point, why didn’t that person tell me? After my bowl arrived, I looked at it and thought, “never would I ever put these things together.” The greens were green – like kale green,  which I typically only intake through juicing because of kale’s inherit rigidity. And it sat in there with cabbage and what I believe to be radicchio, but I’m not up on my forms of leaf chicory. There was some chicken, which could have easily stayed home that day, and there were chickpeas, which are my least favorite of the legumes, but in this bowl they became magnificent.

Also, the nuts. This salad had sustenance. There were at least 3 kinds of nuts, IMHO, but the menu says explicitly almonds. And then there were the stars: avocado, goat cheese, and (the aforementioned) dates. Never in my life have I put all of these things together, especially in the absence of bacon, and expected magic to happen, but this is why I’m not paid by the Northstar Cafe to make menus. Whoever does have this job is: a) doing a better job than the guy at Macaroni Grill, who apparently gets rid of the best work of the last guy, and b) knows secret potions.

This chef also knows that dates and goat cheese behave much like my hilarious friends Randy and Brooke, and when you get them at the same time you can go ahead and just wait for the tears of enjoyment to start rolling down your sore little cheeks. Some things just go together. Goat cheese, by itself, perhaps on a cracker? Meh. But in a bowl of greens, nuts, legumes, and DATES? Let’s just say it was better than my senior prom.

I have watched my children tear apart delightful dishes time and again, or ask to order theirs without an unfavored ingredient. I understand some slight aversions, my own being tomatoes, if they’re not grown in an actual garden and harvested in the last day or so. But I’m now in that group of people who now believes you simply have to trust the chef. It might not be about loving goat cheese, it’s about loving goat cheese in this element. In this dish. Right here. If I had dismissed the Townsfair on the merits of goat cheese, I would’ve missed the magic.

Donald Miller writes in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years that when we leave a movie theater and decide that the movie we just saw wasn’t that good, we don’t automatically preclude movies from the realm of enjoyment. We haven’t decided that all movies are bad, just that movie was bad. Similarly, we can’t observe that goat cheese is always bad, but perhaps sometimes it can be overused or cheaply made.

And life, as well, isn’t always of one essence. I think we can trust the chef. There’s a power in the universe that can take lackluster chickpeas, toss them with a dazzling vinaigrette, and by the power of the presence of avocado, suddenly we have hope for the chick pea. The chick pea doesn’t ruin the salad, it gets transformed by the power of the salad coming together in oneness.

Dissected, life can become a bunch of little things we hate. We can spend our energy picking around, pushing aside and avoiding what we normally don’t appreciate. Or we can take a big bite of the whole thing, tossed together. Some elements are our favorite. Some are not. Some are enjoyed more in partnership with other things. But ultimately, it’s good. When you go to a worthwhile restaurant, you can trust the chef.

Just look for the words “avocado” or “covered in queso.”

Best Friends

I met my first best friend, Diane, on the first day of kindergarten. She rode with me on bus #5, and she sat with her big sister, Amy. In a foreshadowing of my future life, I sat down in the seat across the row and turned to them and asked their names. I promptly forgot the names, but I stuck with them when we got to the school, down the stairs and into the room on the left.

Later, probably not the next day, but in my mind it sticks together with the bus ride introduction, I sat by Diane as Mrs. Mouser reviewed addresses. She asked us each our zip code. We were both 43345 and we thought this was a sure sign we were destined to be BFF forever. (Nevermind you, the class was divided by town – all Ridgeway kids went in the AM, the Mt. Victory kids in the PM. Which means, every single kid in our class was a 43345. But, whatever man. Destiny.)

I managed to keep her around through my elementary years – even when the 80s fashions were at their height and I wore biker shorts under everything. We were equally book nerdish-enough to not apologize for spending the weekend reading The Babysitter’s Club newest release. We would regularly stay the night at one another’s house and staying at her house on a Saturday was a special big deal for me because that meant I went to church with her on Sunday. Though I often went with my mom to our own little country church, her church was something else. Their sanctuary! It was huge! I returned to that church years later, on Diane’s wedding day, to discover the room seemed so large because I was so small. As a 23-year-old, the sanctuary was quite ordinary.

Diane and I played in the band, rode bikes, and explored the outdoors. I helped her with her chores in the dairy barn. Her dad teased me about anything and remains one of the most hilarious people in my memory. I saw my first living being birthed in their barn – a small calf, which the mother had trouble delivering. John had to help pull it out. Diane’s mom asked questions about our days and our friends and when we were disappointed she would sympathize, saying, “aw, bummer!” She would serve us breakfast of fried doughnuts, made from those biscuits in a can, fried in a fry daddy and tossed in a bag of sugar, with a side of whole milk, straight from the cow. Or Tang.

In our teenage years, we parted ways. It was amicable, mostly a result of interests – I took readily to sports and cheerleading and she enjoyed band and music. We ended up in different classes, only seeing one another in Spanish or Advanced Math. She started dating her boyfriend-now-husband and I flitted around social circles as the seasons changed.

In my more typical teenage raucous years, as rumors piled up, Diane never treated me differently. I think it was one of those things where you love a person at a deeper level – not for how they act in a given day or year, but for the true nature of the person you know them to be. Maybe she did roll her eyes or shake her head – but I never knew. She treated me as a good friend would, and that’s what mattered to me.

A friend once told me Diane’s mom had called my mom with concern about my behavior. I have no idea if it was true or if my friend made it up. I didn’t respond with fear – I felt loved. Someone cared enough to ask. Someone cared enough to call. It was a brave thing that her mom did, if the tale is true. I hope I have that kind of bravery in my soul, that kind of love for another person’s child, to call up a fellow mom and say, “hey, is everything okay?”

JJ told me that a boy in H’s class referred to my son as “his best friend.” This is the first time in his nearly seven years of life that the title has been spoken. I’m thankful another person on this planet appreciates him, and even elevates him to a VIP level. The boys trade Lego love and he’s coming over to play this week. It’s a special time, probably more for me than even him. I’m anticipating many years of sleepovers and pizza nights and baseball games and lego-athons.

There are no guarantees that my kids will develop the kind of relationship that Diane and I shared, one that I revere still today. I realize kids tend to have hot-then-cold patterns to friends and things change over time. I feel it would be a tad bold to ask God to give each of my kids a Diane, though I would be thankful if He did. I do hope my kids each find families full of Bettingers. Good people who hold hands as they pray and work hard and ask us to each pitch in as we visit. People who make you feel loved and accepted and welcomed.

But I can’t control their friends, nor even their choice of friendships. I can’t dictate them to my choice of friends or families and it wouldn’t be fair of me to do so. What I can control is what I offer to the future BFF’s of my children. I can fry the (gf) doughnuts and offer to take them to church. I can listen to their stories from school and create space in my household where they feel safe and free and alive and loved. I can care enough to call in those troubling years – not judge or advise, but to listen and to be present.

I want them to have friendships filled with enjoyment and like interests and special secrets. I want to give them a place to keep that friendship safe, alive and even sacred.

Hipsters, generosity, a movie spoiler, and the long road of faith

Warning: This post is the living room conversation that I know will never be, but wish it were. In my ideal world, we would sit in the living room while JJ popped popcorn, enjoy the show, and then discuss afterward. But my sense of reality seems to be growing in my old age, so we’ll settle for me giving some thoughts, you going an watching the movie, and then returning here to agree/disagree/share.

JJ came home the other night with a movie he “thought we’d both enjoy.” It included Ben Stiller, was called While You’re Young and had a sub-plot centered on getting older and having kids. What’s not to love?!

At :45 into the movie, we both hated it. It was slow, we got annoyed with characters, and our expectations were way off. This was not “Meet the Parents” Stiller. This was artsy Stiller (who, btw, shows the depth of his talent) but I was tired and unprepared for the mental work of a thinksy film. Also, there’s an entire scene full of puking and I hate vomit.

By the end, the film redeemed itself. The climax, truth-telling scene pushed me to the back of my seat in awe.

The storyline centered on a middle aged, childless couple who become friends with a young hipster couple in the wake of their best friendship being siderailed by a baby. The hipsters introduce them to other ways of living (“They make everything!” Stiller tries to explain to his SAHD friend) and become saturated with the idea of generosity.

The hipster dude is a budding filmmaker who seeks Stiller’s advice in making a documentary, and – in the spirit of generosity – Stiller helps him. He even offers resources. Along the way, Stiller’s father-in-law, a world renowned documentarian, also gets on board.

Then things get weird. (Enter: puking scene). Distrust for the hipster couple starts to grow. All of a sudden, we’re faced with the fact that not everything we know to be true about the hipster couple is, indeed, true. In fact, there are manipulations to the truth. When Stiller confronts the young filmmaker, he writes it off, appealing to the relativity of truth.

It turns out, the young hipster couple did not live a life of generosity because they believed in world made better by being generous. Generosity appealed to them because of the ways in which it made their life easier. They didn’t do the hard work of life and become generous with its fruits – they simply expected others to do so.

We see this in their approach to friendship. While they invested time into the Stiller couple, they did not do the hard work of honesty, vulnerability and truth-telling. They told the couple what the couple wanted to hear. They weren’t honest with their own beginnings and, in fact, entered into the relationship under false pretenses. But the older couple did do the work. They wrestled. They lost out on other friendships. They were vulnerable with the hipsters in sacred ways.

At the end of the movie, the hipster makes it big with his film. He edited the content in less than 24 hours and held a party/screening. Meanwhile, Stiller returns to sifting through his precious 6 hours of film, tasked with reducing it and maintaining the integrity of the story he wants to tell.

As a person who teeters between the two generations portrayed in the movie, I resonated with all characters at times and became struck with the honesty the movie laid out in front of us. (It was one of those movies that you think “ok, now I can go to bed” when it’s over, and then at 3am you wake up parsing through the subplots. You don’t do that? Oh, never mind. I don’t either.)

I personally spent the last few years intentionally trying to grow in the spirit of generosity. It resonates well with me. Truth-telling – another buzzword of the day – means something in my life. They are grounded in my understanding of God as the source of generosity and in our duty to reveal his nature.

This morning I read (from The Message translation) Matthew 7:13-14:

“Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.”

I couldn’t help but think of this young hipster couple and their approach to life. How simple it is to wave a flag of ideas like generosity and love and friendship without doing the hard work of weaving them into the fabric of our lives? This young couple wanted the world to live them out so that their own lives could be easier, not for the world to be better. In fact, I wonder if they believed that if their lives were easier than the world would be better. (Ironic, said by the woman who just whined and complained about school forms being an utter inconvenience, eh?)

Despite my highly aware eating habits, I’m not a hipster. I’m not cool. But I was born into an era of convenience – foods, entertainment, and lifestyles. The generation behind me has experienced it at a heightened level. With a change in pace comes effects on our life that I don’t believe have ever been calculated, and I believe they will hold great bearing on the way in which we practice our faith. I can identify and even sympathize with the challenges of accepting a faith that says it requires total attention and a lifetime of vigorous work. Who wants that? We want to do what we love and retire at 40. Following Jesus when it’s hard does not appeal. Loving people who don’t love us has little appeal when they’re mean. “Serving” becomes a noble concept, especially when we’re the ones served, but as another teacher once said, “We love the idea of being a servant until someone starts treating us like one.” Ouch.

At first I felt this movie played with the young generation’s approach and handling of the concept of truth. But for myself, it shed light into our human (not just youthful) propensity to gravitate toward what is easy over what is good. The bootstrap generations ahead of us might be shouting Amen behind me, but I’m not talking about the easy way of working hard for yourself and leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.

Truly, this doesn’t come down to how many hours you spend at an office (or not) or if you expect people to make your life easy (or not). Life is much more than that. I believe that’s the idea behind Generosity, and more so, the Gospel. We give to the world not in relation with what we have but because we want the world to have it. Not because it’s owed to us.

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