The Power of Showing Up

How wonderful it is to linger with a friend even though everything that has to be said has been said, and to just enjoy each other's company. It's when lingering occurs, that deep conversations are ignited, and from those deep conversations, iron sharpens iron, and our thoughts are refined and clarified, and the truth is seen more clearly.
– my then-future-husband in a blog post in 2004

There are people who go out of their way to be physically present for their friends. My husband is one of them: he plans trips nearly every year with various groups of friends, and we moved out to California largely to be near some of them. But my relationships have always fallen under the iron rule of pragmatism: if it wasn’t expedient or at least marginally convenient, it didn’t happen. Over the years, friendships often occurred more or less by default, emerging as I happened to find myself around someone, but fading as circumstances drew us apart.

That is why it was so radical, perhaps, when four of my college friends flew here last week to whisk me away from regular life so we could all hang out for a few days. This was not something we had ever done before, and I was surprised to find that my favorite thing about it was not the fantastically endless series of takeouts and restaurant visits that spared us all from cooking, or even the reminiscences and updates—it was simply their presence. At one point, they gathered round to lay hands on me as they prayed, which I realize can seem overly cheesy or pious depending upon one’s religious proclivities (and prior to which there was a nearly comical degree of discussion surrounding consent), but more than anything, that moment felt like an enactment of presence, a tangible demonstration of the fact that they had all showed up. I thought about what it had taken for that to happen—the job and childcare arrangements, the travel hassles and ticket costs, the support of their spouses. Nothing about their presence was convenient or easy, and that’s precisely why it was so powerful.

Back in college, none of us would have thought twice about meeting up for long, lingering conversations; in fact, it felt like I was constantly having to remind myself to go study instead. But somewhere along the way, things flipped. Nowadays, we have those things we studied for; we have degrees, houses, kids, careers, but what is harder to find and harder still to hold on to are the kinds of friendships we used to take for granted. Nowadays, likes are cheap and texts are easy, but people who show up for you when it matters—that is rare. It is a precious thing to be given the two currencies that matter most in our harried, distracted world: attention and time.

I had forgotten how it feels to linger, to converse without agenda or time limit. How it feels to let the conversation flow where it will, tangents and all. How one friend brings out aspects in another that you would otherwise have missed. It was all a re-discovery, the kind that happens when you remember how someone used to be while simultaneously discovering how they have changed—and somehow, you see that about yourself too, both how you were and how you’ve altered. As time passed, there emerged a sense that we were seeing things as a group that we would not have seen any other way: truths not only about, but beyond, ourselves. The swath which suffering cuts through life. The effect of a brave decision. The power of God’s deliverance and the constancy of his goodness.

I met my husband twenty-one years ago when he wrote about the importance of lingering. In that post, he quoted a description of friendship from C.S. Lewis:

He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, and funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's work have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?

There is something we bring out as a group in one another, things we see about life and about God, that can be glimpsed no other way. Is this real life? Not exactly: soon enough, we returned to our regular schedules, probably a little more exhausted, but also quite a bit more grateful for the lives we returned to. That is the thing about good company: you return gladder for your life than you were before you left. And I don’t think it could have happened through a text or a zoom or a call. I think it had to happen how it did: sitting together in person while the long hours unfolded around us.

This same week, our nine-year-old turned ten (she secretly confessed that she liked being little and wasn’t looking forward much to the double digits. I couldn’t disagree). To celebrate, she asked for a sleepover, which my husband gallantly hosted while I was gone. Her best friends came over, they all piled into sleeping bags on the floor and talked into the wee hours of the morning (her older brother, who remarked that this was a sleepover, not a talkover, vacated the adjacent room in protest). I thought about her hanging out with her friends, while I hung out with mine, and it occurred to me that she knew what it had taken me twenty years and a cancer diagnosis to discover: that the best gift of all is time spent lingering with friends. That sacrificing some comfort and routine for the sake of showing up for those you care about is always going to be worth it.