You don’t have to be your best self.

A personal glimpse into one of my dear friendships.

I wrote half of this letter last weekend, the day after my dear friend Lex’s wedding. I wrote the rest traveling to see my family in Montana, still just as grateful. The following is a very personal glimpse into our friendship. It’s just that—a glimpse. But I hope it gives you a glimmer of hope, a spark of imagination, of the way you deserve to receive and give wholehearted love.

Ryan and I are sitting in a cafe in downtown Grand Rapids, catching our breath while basking in the bright sun pouring through tall windows. I am lapping up the light. I keep closing my eyes to linger in the warmth, strolling through my mind’s palace of memories.

Last night: my dear friend twirling in the arms of her beloved, newly wed, face bright. Her eyes are resting on his, moments after glancing over the faces gathered, anointing each with an attention that can only be described as joy, as gratitude.

Have you ever known a person whose love feels like light?

I met Alexis de Weese on a zoom call. Me, an over-eager first time author who didn’t even have her own apartment to live in.¹ Her, a marketer with Zondervan with a sharp wit and an open heart. I don’t remember much from our first meeting, except laughter and feeling like I had met someone I’d always known and already loved. Marketing meetings quickly became absurd and hilarious text threads, followed by more meetings that probably could have been emails but were definitely at least 50% mutual excuses to hang out. She’s someone who is so herself, which gave me freedom to be my quirky, eager self with her, without fear or shame that I was too much. She recently wrote a killer of a post about this dynamic on Instagram (linked below):

“Become a very specific person. You’ll find yourself loved very specifically.

By others. By yourself.”

lexdeweese

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I never expected publishing to write a story of more belonging in my life. I never even expected it to go well; I just knew there was life inside me that I had to let flow out of my own body. Having just lost a whole spiritual community for the sake of wholeness, my expectations of safety and freedom to be known by anyone in a Christian publishing house were low. I just knew I had to show up as my full self. Whether anyone would want that offering wasn’t my business.

The beautiful thing about risking being your actual real self is that the people who choose to love you are the ones daring to do the same.

Maybe it’s a stage of adulthood, or perhaps it’s a symptom of post-traumatic stress, but when I met Lex, I was losing heart that loving anyone new wouldn’t just end up smashing me up inside. Sure, I have long-lasting friendships with people who have loved every frustrating adult version of me—the uptight college freshman, the lady who sat high on a theological throne, the woman crumpled over in bed from pain, the baby therapist slightly drunk on her own insights, the fledgling author stumbling her way into an oddly public-facing career… But, newer friends, especially friends in church or in “Christian” publishing, had given more bait-and-switch than come-and-become.

We can write about kindness and grace until we hit a bestseller list, but most of us struggle to let our syntax form a spacious enough place inside us to really welcome others wandering into their own wholeness. Becoming is just that—a process.

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Sometimes I wonder if therapy culture has conditioned us out of compassion.

We scroll ourselves full of sweet social media sound bites from therapists and coaches about self-care and boundaries, some of which truly enhance our lives. But becoming is not always palatable. Becoming is not always as straightforward as a social media post makes it seem. And when the bitter taste of someone else’s slow steep into wholeness hits our senses, a lot of us have unknowingly armed ourselves with language that reinforces our choice to spit them out.

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Two years ago: Lex lounges on our couch under the exposed pipes in the apartment our landlord refused to fix. She’s here in Colorado for the launch of my second book, and we just spent a gorgeous evening meeting readers at a signing at Tattered Cover bookstore. The bookstore sells out of copies of my books, and we replenish their stock from my author copies. I come home stunned, exhausted, and revelatory. I’m realizing this is the start of a new phase of my career, and I’m not sure I’m ready to leave the comfort of my first publisher behind. I’m not sure I’m ready to leave my colleague-turned-confidant behind. My agent and I are about to start pitching my next book(s), and he’s prepared me to dream bigger. But bigger feels bad to a woman conditioned by Christianity to believe that small, slow growth is the most sacred.

I’m a mess of hope and fear inside. Will becoming the fullest version of my author self end up barring me from belonging? Will other authors treat me like a sellout? Will Lex?

We shed some tears, but mostly, we shed shame. She already knew what I was so afraid to share. She doesn’t tire of my incessant need to interrogate every possible eventuality, publisher choice, and fear.

She shoots me straight.² She blesses my becoming.

the two of us that weekend, two years ago

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Last October: Lex and her fiancé Kwade use their vacation days to fly from Michigan to Colorado—just to sit on a couch with me and Ryan. I’ve been home from the hospital for just over a month, and I just started being able to walk up and down our stairs at home without Ryan basically carrying me. I only descend those stairs to darken the doorways of my many specialists, and they’re all baffled by how sick I remain. We tentatively planned this trip before my body almost lost breath, and back then, in the best before of my life, I dreamed of leading Lex and Kwade through golden aspen groves, and maybe even combining their visit with the grief ritual hike we had hoped to lead for the second year in a row. Now, I can’t hike in the trees, because I’m dragging my left leg like a tree trunk. And no one knows why.

My face is something like five times its normal size, and my heart feels like it’s been halved. Even though Lex has only shown me acceptance, letting her see me like this feels like a risk. The last time we were together I was bright and full and beaming. But now? Sadness and agitation shroud me. I’m a sliver of the self I prefer.

We drive west to Cripple Creek, where I’ve booked an airbnb with no wifi and big windows facing aspen trees that are gilded and shimmering as we arrive. I figured, if we can’t hike, we can bask. I post up with a pile of books on a couch facing the trees, and Kwade, Lex, and Ryan go into town to grab us some dinner and groceries. When they get back, Lex enters the cabin practically dancing. Somehow, she found a DVD of Barbie at Dollar General, which she knows I’ve been dying to see. All summer long, I watched a parade of Instagram stories full of friends decked out in pink at theaters. The only theater I saw was an operating room. She’s brought the party to me. Kwade pulls on his pink tie dye “Kenough” hoodie, and we all howl with laughter at Ryan Gosling’s Ken and Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie. I may or may not have also cried. This is better than what I wanted, I think to myself.

I don’t have energy all weekend to do much more than read and nap in a fog of half sadness/half gratitude, but no one acts like it’s a disappointment. No one acts like I’m a disappointment.

On our way back home, I hand everyone a pair of eclipse glasses. I’m not much of a planner, but my rounded body and the bodies of the sun and moon seemed set on aligning, and I can’t pass up the chance to let it all merge alongside the ones I love. It’s an annular eclipse, when the moon is at her farthest from us and for a few brief moments, she obscures the light of the sun.

I have never felt farther from other bodies than in this shadowed season. At the end of August, my body ballooned fifty pounds in two weeks from the high-dose steroids that were saving my life.³ My face has swollen so much that by the end of each day, I struggle to see out my eyes. My doctors call it moon face, and I’ve called it cruel. But the poet in me sees possibility, like maybe the moon can show me something true about myself, something true about all of us.

We stop to get gas right as the moon is passing in front of the sun. Lex and I stand together, delighted at the dark disc turning the sun into a ring of light. This is what I needed to see—when the moon obscures the sun, the light that remains turns shadows into shimmers. I look down at the crescent shadows dancing beneath a tree, and I breathe deep. My own eclipse can show me what shimmers.

I snap a selfie with Lex, even though part of me doesn’t want to remember the moon-faced me. It’s an act of hope, of holding. What I most want to remember of our faces is that when I was overshadowed by sickness, my friend still sought and saw the good in me.

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I’ve given you these glimpses because I long for you to be this befriended.⁴

My friend Lex is so much more than I even showed you. I’ve watched her welcome more and more of herself. I’ve watched her choose to heal what others harmed. I’ve seen her risk love and risk desire. I’ve watched her dream and soar and study. And I’ve sat with her while she’s cried, listened to her lament, carried a bit of her aches with me in my heart. We give each other patient witness. We don’t expect perfection; we expect becoming. And last weekend I watched with extra joy as she vowed to love someone entirely worthy of her wholeness, because I know well how this woman loves. She gives space for others to grow into the light.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy culture has trained us out of the very transformation it claims to seek. Sometimes I wonder if we build boundaries instead of becoming. Sometimes we seem to fence off the very ground where friends need to our presence to grow, to root into knowing that even when they feel buried, they are alive.

All I know is that I have been loved by someone who holds space and light. When my own light was obscured, her presence showed me the shimmers in the shadows.

All I know is that I don’t want you to have to be your best self; I want you to be your whole self.

Please don’t fence off your friendships from fullness. Obviously, I am not saying you shouldn’t have boundaries or that you need to welcome abusive behavior. I’m saying that maybe you’re boundary-ing yourself away from being fully loved. Maybe you need to be and receive a more spacious place to change and stretch and shift, to be shadowed and sad, to grow into fuller, more steadfast love.

All I know is that when we no longer have to be near-perfect, we get to be loved.

—KJ

PS, this is the light that greeted me as Ryan and I were returning home to Colorado after Lex’s wedding. It says it all, right?

1. We were living in our friends’ guest room (Josh and Rachel, whom The Lord Is My Courage is dedicated to) after leaving behind a second church job that felt like it was going to crush us.

2. Says things like, “KJ, what you have to learn is that publishing is not RuPaul’s Drag Race. You don’t have to be friends with every person you partner with.” 😂☠️

3. Here’s what I wrote in October about my body changing:

4. PS One of my fave instagram follows posted a beautiful spoken word poem this week on this same dynamic. I nearly squealed in the airport, delighted at how so many of us simultaneously stumble into the same truths.

davidgatepoet

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