What our world needs more of? Hanging!

It was a day off. Saturday, was a long day at a horse show, then home to work before pizza and bedtime. I wasn’t dreading Sunday except Sunday is not Sunday anymore. And this Sunday? Well, I was going to hang with some friends.

Hanging- we don’t do it much anymore. Now to my kids, hanging is a much different. Their mode of ‘hanging’ is almost literally ‘hanging’!

The younger generation hang in hammocks. Get a couple trees, put up your hammock, string it tight and hang. If you don’t have two tree’s the front of your Jeep will work! Or anything study, so I have been told. I hammock, slightly, but today I hung and NOT in a hammock.

Today, old hearts crashed. We crashed into a home we have all crashed into before. Long before I was married, long before life happened to all of us and long before God changed us into who we are today, we hung. So today, we hung once again. Brunch, coffee and love. We talked about life. What life has done to us. How we have responded. Kids, families, sadness, God, lessons, life back in the 70’s and early 80’s and we laughed. Our lives weren’t clean white picket fence lives without a blemish. There were more than a few dents in our families, jobs, cars and things tried and failed at. We laughed about how young we were, the perspective’s we had that may or may not have changed in the years. We talked about the culture and what it has done to our faith. We talked about the good old days, and we laughed about the moments when we fell flat on our faces. We laughed about getting old, cried about watching the ones we love age in front of our hearts and nothing we can do except love them. We hung! We spent time together, with no agenda’s, no plan, no purpose except to catch up. And in the midst of hanging we discovered a few things.

Friendship is priceless. Love doesn’t diminish with time. Jokes that were funny back then, are still funny except in a different way. Pictures don’t capture love but we tried anyway.

The people we love, we talk about. So if some of you felt your ears burning, it was because you were being loved with our fond memories. We loved your relationship to us. We loved the foolish things you tried and failed. We loved picking you up and we loved simply saying, “remember when?” Surprises were there, of course. There were a few, “did you know” or an awkward question asked that the answer was more awkward but friends don’t really care about awkward. Love somehow just falls in the cracks and then the ultimate, ‘how can we pray?”

I listened to people today. A couple of these “people” I have known my whole life, or rather their whole life as they are a bit younger. We talked about moments when our life stood still and how we perceived things as a child. We listened to each other tell about their lives: moments when we showed the best parts of our hearts, and then the times when our hearts were a bit on the ragged edge. So were any of us surprised when someone mentioned the clock said 1:45? We began talking at 9:30ish when the brunch began. We weren’t done. We had to leave, but we weren’t ready to leave. Hanging takes time. In our busy world people don’t stop to hang. It brought to mind 1 John 3:18. “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue but in deed and in truth.” There is something about giving your gift of time, hanging, that shows love deeper than any other act one can do. I could buy an expensive gift, but the gift of hanging and loving is priceless. For all of us, the morning of just listening, learning, loving and hugging were priceless gifts. Hanging is love in action- word and deed.

I left for home feeling full. You know the full that you get after spending way too long at a buffet. I needed a couple things at the store so walked into the local grocery store. Halfway down the fourth row, someone looked at me and said, “mask or not, I know it’s you.” And, as God would have it, we hung. We hung right there by the toilet paper and paper towels across the row from the zip-lock baggies. We did move a few times when people needed what we were standing by, but it was another moment to hang. Hanging can’t be done in a microwave. You know when you have been hanging too long. Someone’s husband comes to the grocery store looking for them! I’m glad I had nothing else to do with my Sunday but to listen to people’s hearts. We can say we love people and we can say we care, but when we take the time to hang, people will believe we mean it.

My day is almost over and it’s been an odd Sunday but a wonderful one. Usually I listen to four sermons. Usually I take notes and think about what God had to share with me. Today- I hung. And I will go to sleep very fulfilled and very much thankful that God gave me hearts to love, arms to hung with (social distancing went out the window pretty quickly) and I am blessed beyond words to express.