friends – Solano Writing

I crave alone time.

It’s how I recharge after a day of dealing with people.

Nowadays, I find my alone time in my “cave” (a spare room with no windows in the basement).

The bike tires are flat, so my gut isn’t. Pants that fit my waste have plenty of thigh room now.

So, what’s with the title? Am I writing about superheroes?

Maybe someday.

Proverbs 27 has a verse that says,

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”

(ESV)

As much as I love my alone time, I can’t do life alone.

I would flounder, lose my motivation. Life would stink.

Since I was a teenager, I started intentionally reaching beyond myself. I purposely sought to get to know other people.

The friends I’ve made over the years have challenged me in so many ways. They’ve encouraged, challenged and corrected me enough to keep my on the right path for my life.

When I’ve strayed from that path, they’ve guided me back to it.

Hopefully, I’ve guided a few of them in return.

All this comes to mind now as our church is getting ready to kick off small groups for the fall season. I’ll be leading a men’s breakfast every Saturday morning in Brighton, Colorado. We have dozens of others groups in the area. Email me if you want any information about them.

If you aren’t in this area, I strongly recommend getting involved in some sort of small group.

If your church does not have them or you don’t go to church, start one of your own.

I spotted this list on a customer’s wall.

That’s a lot of missing stuff.

I’m only showing the bottom of the list because there are names attached to some of the solved items higher up.

It sounds like most of the missing items were misunderstandings.

Understanding might be the one thing most missing in relationships.

This group of co-workers often misunderstood where an item should be or what items they could take for their own use. This list brought that out into the open and avoided some hard feelings.

I am reminded of a time when I misunderstood my son.

Something was missing and all evidence pointed to him. He refused to admit it so I took a treasured item of his until he would confess.

I never found the missing item but I found my senses when he still maintained his innocence. You see, he is on the autism spectrum and finds it very difficult to lie.

He refused to confess because he was innocent! I was the one in the wrong and had to apologize and, of course, return his treasured item.

Now it’s easier for me to understand him but he still has a hard time understanding others. Autism often makes it difficult to recognize the subtleties of expression and inflection.

He has learned to recognize my sarcasm but still has a hard time reading faces.

And people have a hard time reading him. He’ll refuse to shake hands, not because he dislikes someone but because of a fear of germs and a lack of understanding of the importance of social norms.

Will we ever get to a place of everyone understanding one another perfectly?

Of course not!

What a boring world that would be.

But we can recognize that we don’t understand each other perfectly and not get so uptight at perceived anger, insults, and injustices.

I say we keep exploring the mysteries of human communication as we seek to understand each other.

And be quick to apologize and forgive.

Never is that more important than election season.

Many will read this on Election Day.

We each have our heart-felt political beliefs and tend to not understand how anyone can think differently and still be a good person.

I have news for you – they can.

They just think differently than us so we tend to misunderstand them.

And speaking of misunderstanding,

the first thing that popped into my mind when I read #24 on that list was

“to Candy Mountain”.

If you don’t get that reference you are truly blessed. If you must know, search for Charlie the Unicorn on YouTube (and don’t blame me).

Tag: friends

Iron Men