The Steadfast Heart

I have a distinct memory of my dad relaying to adolescent me that I didn’t like change. At thirteen, I was surprised that someone else could tell me something about myself that I didn’t already know. The obvious response for a middle school girl like me was to deny the outrageous concept that my father could have any insight about my strong-willed personality, the indistinguishable personality that was knitted from his very DNA. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t think about what he had said. 

Not liking change and being resistant to it was a trait that to me, was drenched in all things negativity and in return, I resisted the fact that I was resistant to change.  That alone proved my dad absolutely right. Thankfully, it was never about scorekeeping for my parents; it was about coaching up my character.  What became helpful for me to learn was yes, I do not like change. But that also allowed me to learn that sometimes change is necessary. Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is inevitable. And sometimes change isn’t meant to be understood. 

The coping mechanism for a change-resistor like myself is to give change a better name, so I have arrived at the word: seasons. Growing up in the Midwest, the changing seasons are engrained in the calendar of my spirit. Come September, I welcome fall-colored flannels and pumpkin spice lattes like my long-lost friends. By December I pray for all things snow covered and white.  March always seems like a long time coming and I love the break in the cold air it brings.  Come June, I am psychologically programmed to crave the sunshine and my sweet iced tea. 

Oh, how I wish I could welcome changing relationships like I do the seasons.  For most of my life, I have felt like I am either one step ahead of most friendships (perhaps the more realistic description is way out in left field of an idealistic relationship) or three steps behind.  What I’ve found myself whispering in my prayers since my childhood is the deep desire for the effort and care I place in my friendships to be reciprocated. 

But most times, they’re not.  Or the favor I hold with people changes with the seasons.  Other times I may hit strides with certain friends that I come to realize later were merely circumstantial.  

In college, I can remember laying awake at night hoping that someday when I was married, I’d never forget what it was like to be single. I feared that married years would blur the memory of what it was like to be single or to date and the possibility that it may diminish my relatability with the friends who hadn’t arrived at that stage just yet. 

In the first year of our marriage, Hunter and I looked at each other so many times and promised each other to never forget what it was like to be married and not have kids.  To us, everyone had kids and the not having them part was a total prevention of connecting with other adults. Everyone, and I literally mean that, told us that we would make more friends our age once we started having kids and joined that season of life. What a frustrating reality.  A reality that we were just beginning to adjust and adapt to, by the way, until my positive pregnancy test had other plans. 

While I’m being honest, the season I’m currently walking through has been quiet and at times desolate. Making friends can be tough, especially when you move.  I want to applaud and award all of the adults who move and make friends like it’s nothing. If I’m describing you, you are to be highly commended on such novel and riveting accomplishment. But if you are like me, putting yourself out there can be challenging.  I attend everything I am invited to in our little town these days, but the second I reach out to try to plan something on my own, I can’t get any takers.  So for all of you recent Uhaul users with new friends, please write a “How to Make Friends for Dummies” book with me in mind.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I feel things on an incredibly deep level that transparently speaking, can freak some people out.  As an external processor, I can get on to topics and tangents that come across intense and overwhelming.  Sometimes talking about the weather seems way too surface level to entertain me because I have a profound soul craving to dig deeper into the human heart and mind.  While most choose thinking simply, I naturally choose analytical complexity. 

I wish knowing this about myself would be able to solve what I believe is my social ineptness.  Occasionally I have those reality check moments when the way I perceive a friendship as incredibly special, like “best friend” special is exposed for not being as true for the other person. And of course, nothing brings this to light better than when a friend gets engaged or enters into a season that you’re just not in at the moment. 

I can look back on my adolescent years and find so much pain from friendships that fell apart and fell apart hard.  My first real experience in middle school of having a group of girl friends that seemed to accept me turned into a season of immense isolation by the time I got into high school.  Their “Monica & Rachel” friendship lived on long after I came across a journal entry stating they wished Natalie Nelsen had never been born or been accepted into their group. 

I’ve experienced betrayal of the cruelest kind by best friends and boyfriends, college roommates changing their mind on how they felt about me and letting everyone know, being third string, left out, stood up, and enough at-home-alone-and-uninvited-on-a-Friday-night situations to leave me on a therapist’s couch for the rest of my life. 

So you can imagine, I know every Taylor Swift lyric that has ever been written and I can recognize the seasons changing better than the weatherman.  But in a very backwards and upside down way, I am grateful to have experienced those friendships and to have known heartache and devastation on such a powerful level.  Time has allowed me to see all of the ways that I too contributed to those situations and every single ounce of those experiences have been engrained into my character and my perception of the changing seasons. 

I ask myself, “Where do I go from here?” recurrently.  So here it is: I have accepted that the relationships I had last year look very different this year.  The friendships I am so blessed to even have right now may not be standing by the time I take my last breath.  Any friendship or favor I have with people is such a gift, even if they may stand for only a season.  The surface level conversations I have with others even when I desire to go so much deeper—even those exchanges fall under God’s favor on me.  

There are so many times I have failed to recognize that I am sinking in an ocean of His grace.  Isn’t it crazy how we can get in the way of ourselves so often?  I am so rich in my relationships with Hunter and our parents. Blessed beyond measure is not a heavy enough of statement to truly express how grateful I am for a husband who sees me and listens to my heart and for parents and in-laws who invest so much time into my life even when I may reciprocate the same attentiveness. 

And with that, I have come to recognize that I am truly wired to always crave deep friendships.  It’s taken me an incredible amount of time to understand that the void I tend to habitually feel is only meant to be filled by Jesus.  That may sound insane, but I believe it.  Ever thought, “There’s gotta be more to life than this?”.  Stacie Orrico said it best in 2003, but she’s absolutely right.  And there is more to life than this.  The gap I sense in relationships is supposed to be there. I am supposed to long for more. More is Jesus.  More is the friendship and the relationship that only He can give.  

The seasons may change with the people placed in my life, but my security can always be found in the person of Jesus Christ, who knows both true friendship and isolation irrefutably well.  That is the hope we can cling to in this life!  

If you are familiar with the Enneagram assessment, it’s probably blatantly obvious to you that I am a true four.  Fours love to be unique individualists that hold significance while at the same time wrestling with their uniqueness, causing them to feel lonely and yearning to be understood. 

And just like my dad knew the heart of thirteen-year-old me, I am so grateful to know and trust a heavenly Father who understands me for all my uniqueness. Who meets me in my loneliness moments. Who understands my disappointment when friendships don’t feel reciprocated.  Who validates my significance.  Who is the creator of every season.  And who remains the same when everything changes. 

I may never understand change, but I love the fact that the Author of Change fully understands and deeply loves me. 

Take care & take heart, 

Natalie

For more on the Enneagram assessment of a four or to hear my personality described to a T: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-4/

Originally written November 6, 2017