Deep and Wide
No… I’m not talking about the children’s worship song. I’m talking you and how you invest in care. Are you few and deep or are you many and wide? Stay with me here… Each of us have a different capacity for caring and also a different mindset when living out what it means to care with others around us. Some people are able to care deep, I mean all in, with a smaller circle of people. While others are more apt to extend their care with less of a depth mindset and more of a breadth mindset; higher quantity of people in their life, but less ability to go deeply within those multiple relationships. It can simply be put as this; some people prefer a few friends who they are able to do life with in a deep, care hard, in an all in kind of way. Few people, deep care. Others were not made with the ability/capacity to go that deep in relationships but have the ability to maintain a larger capacity of people they consider “their people”… I don’t want to say quality over quantity, but some folks might resonate with that. Many and wide caring people have the gift of connecting with a variety of folks and thus can have a very vast circle of friends. Recently, I have been thinking about this idea of connecting with people and how as I have gotten older, I have changed what group I consider myself to be a part of. As I navigated tricky friendships in my life I have come to find out that I am someone who craves deep friendships with a few folks. I am all in with my people, they are basically like my family and I can treat them that way because they are not in large quantity. Because of this I am not able, nor do I wish to have tons and tons of “close” friends. Instead, I prefer a few folks who get me, my depth of care, and are able to understand me at the level in which God created me to be able to maintain. This has taken me a lot of hurt, confusion and frustration to get to. Broken friendships, unmet expectations, confusion about why I care and others around me didn’t seem to reciprocate. Then something happened in my life that felt like an ah-ha moment. I had a friend for a long time who I cared about deeply. She was like the sister I never had (or I thought as I was living through this relationship). As we grew and changed I always felt like there was something lacking in our friendship. Why was I always feeling like I was caring so much and that same level of care wasn’t returned back to me? After a series of events and tons of life changing moments and general growing up… it was time to go different ways. Of course because of the person I am, I felt this sense of failure, like I didn’t do enough to make this relationship work. It was through a lot of prayer and conversations with my “deep” people, that I realized it was all ok. This friend and I simply were not giving each other the level of care in which we both needed. I was a few and deep person and she was a many and wide. And that is ok. God does not create us to be able to have both a deep and wide investment in caring relationships that can be maintained for long periods of time. Some people just simply don’t have the capacity to “go there” as far as depth of investment in caring. Talking about struggles, failures, worries, what ifs, problem solving, inquiring… these things terrify the many and wide folks. They hate it and that is ok. I can not do wide spread care with many many people. It just does not fulfill the way I was made to do relationships. Likewise, people who were made to have many friendships but not ones that consistently connect on a deeper level are just simply not made to go “deep”, that is not fulfilling to them and it is actually intimidating and sometimes paralyzing. I truly believe you are either deep or wide. The more I began to think about this, another layer about the deep or wide concept emerged. I started wondering if it was possible to be someone else's person with out them being able to be your person? For example, if you are a “wide- and many- caring” person and you are friends with a “deep-and few- caring” person, that deep-caring person might fulfill the needs that you have for sustaining relationships. Their version of a go to person, even if that is not YOUR version of a go-to person. However, that same “deep-caring” person may not feel fulfilled by that particular “wide-caring” person not for any other reason other than, the wide-carer simply was not made to be a deep-carer. And that is ok. What you are for someone may not be what they are for you, but the point is that we all need a someone. So today I am thankful for the deep and few carers in my world and also for the many and wide. Each example shows me how I need care and how to care and how the power of caring is one of the most essential components of the beautiful and crazy world, regardless how you do it. So, how do you care…. Deep or Wide? |
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