Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 50. My Witness is the Space Between You and Me (a safe place to grow) (originally published Sept 13 2023)

Hello human.

One of the amazing rewards on my witness99 journey is the connection I make with others that I would not have met, otherwise. 

One of these connections was an Instagram connection with a young mother who started an interesting project called the 100peopleproject in 2017. If you want to connect with Amanda, her Instagram handle is @onehundredpeopleproject . Her website:  https://www.amandawettersten.com/blog Both included in the show notes.

Here’s her telling how it started: “In short, the 100 People Project was born out of loneliness.  After my family relocated in the spring of 2016, I found myself struggling to make friends; I had no one to invite and it felt like no one wanted to invite me.  In my pity party, I remembered my grandmother, a fellow extrovert, who during a difficult time pulled out her church directory, started with the A’s, and began to invite every family in her little country church to dinner.  I figured if it worked for her, why not me?  With no church directory to my name, I settled on a number: 100, which is, as we all know, the ultimate number for people under 6.  As a former Kindergarten teacher, these happen to be my favorite people and I believe they know a thing or two about making friends. I rung in the new year of 2017 with the resolution to share a meal with 100 people.  It changed everything for me.”

In a recent repost, Amanda shared her 2023 focus:  50 acts of kindness and 50 people to dinner. 

And she reflected:  “I wonder if we think there are two types of people in the world: the invited and the uninvited. I hope not, because when we do, we are forgetting a third, very important camp: the inviters. Several years ago, just when I thought my loneliness was going to take me under, I realized that the opposite of invited isn’t always uninvited.  Sometimes it’s inviter.”

Reaching Out, Reaching In, and the Space Between

And here’s the part that got me, human.

She said, “Don’t forget, the people closest to us deserve the best of us. The more I reach out to others, the more I remind myself of the importance of reaching in to the others in my home.”

I responded to Amanda:  “Love the discernment of ‘reaching out’ and ‘reaching in’, that there is a difference in how this happens between the two.”

This dynamic, the difference between reaching out and reaching in is where everyone’s witness journey lives. The passing back and forth. The space between. That reaching out and reaching in shares a meeting ground. That Amanda’s commitment to 50 + 50 acts of kindness coupled with 50 meals is the perfect illumination of why I am celebrating with a big ole gratitude pinata… episode 50 on my witness journey. The halfway mark.

It is not unlike swimming or anything physical where you have two choices. Keep going, or stop. Well, I am not stopping. That’s for sure. The spiritual miles I have come make turning back impossible. Don’t you see human, that your witness journey is transformative. You can never go back to who you were.

Creating Space for Someone You Love to Grow

So I spend my 50^th episode minutes pondering this: 

Why does Amanda remind herself of reaching in to those close when she reaches outward? 

Well, I do not know the answer to this at the recording of this episode, but for me maybe this is to say that the closer two people are as love draws us together, the harder it is because there are layers and layers of familiarity, conclusions, and “knowing” going on.

That reaching out and reaching in serve as a trigger for each other.

Maybe the love we have for the people we are closest to begins to fall behind and distinguishes itself in predictable ways we grow weary of applauding. The familiarity of love numbs us.

The older I get the clearer it becomes to me that the finality with which we love those we are closest to can be just short of a prison sentence on their ability to grow. All the good intention that is born out of familiarity can become a lasting judgement that we will not let someone break free from.                                            

Reaching in to our family is clearing space that we thought was already filled with all the things we already know about someone. Hey, if it still looks like a mental nursery, something is wrong.

Reaching in to our family is creating space for someone you love to grow. Staying prayerfully aware that you don’t know everything about them. That you don’t always know what they are going to do. And you don’t emotionally dress in the same outfit in anticipation of their action, response or reaction.

Mark 6:4

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”

Jesus said a prophet has no honor in his own town. A prophecy fulfilled in relation to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But in our lives I see wisdom in His Words through how we struggle with loving the people closest to us, in our families. Because when we love, we claim knowing that person well, and that often fossilizes into a lasting judgement about who that person is.

We put a love stake in the ground and mark everything about that person as if it is the final word. But a person is not a house. A person is a blueprint. A starting point. A person is more like an rv, a vehicle, a phone. A purse, an animal, a taxi… anything that moves from one point to the next.

We are emotionally and spiritually mobile for life, human.

The Father Knows the Son, the Son Knows the Father

The ultimate example of knowing someone deeply, is how Jesus talked about His Heavenly Father, that we just cannot know the Father without Him.  How truly amazing He is. Our God Almighty.

Matthew 11:27

All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

 

So we stay open to how our loved one grows into a new response, a new activity, a new approach to an old problem. Our witness is motivated by the Jesus of Matthew 11:27. We support our loved one through Him.

We look for how someone we love is growing toward something new.

We identify ways to create a safe, yet inspiring environment for that new growth.

We work on new responses to worn out dialogue that travels the road not taken.  

Thank you, Robert Frost. In His words, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” –The Road Not Taken

And how does this work for reaching out to those we do not know well? Reaching outside our daily circle? I have learned from my own experience that being the inviter has some pretty incredible power behind it. We came to a new community during the pandemic, and I went through many of the same feelings Amanda shared and much of the same outreach in my new neighborhood. Through baking, hosting, greeting, inviting.

I think, more so than ever, that the power of reaching out is that we are seeing someone with fresh eyes, and if we are watching closely, we may be the one who helps them see something in themselves, something that those closest to them have long since forgotten, shied away from, denied, or entirely missed.

Helping people grow is about a simple spiritual perspective. It is about being the external affirmation, the spiritual prompt that Jesus calls us to be. When someone is wanting to, trying to, so close to, changing something (this is called growing) there isn’t anything more important for me to do than to demonstrate the assurance of God through how I love that person in that moment.

The Space Between – This is Where Our Witness Lives

What resonates with me about Amanda’s journey is that it is a transformational one, from loneliness to limitless. There is no end to the opportunities when you take on the accountability of being the inviter. Being transformed means there is no way back. Amanda has been living “the life of 100 people” since 2017. Multiplied by, in the words of a kindergartner, a gazillion one hundreds.

Inviting someone to stand at the threshold of your life with a kind act, or a home-cooked meal, someone you do not know at all or know casually, transforms that moment into a safe house, a space between, for that person to grow. Grow in ways that someone possibly less objective (aka more involved) might not be providing.

Inviting growth for someone living across the threshold of your daily life with an intentional shift in dialogue, a new question, a first-time compliment or praise observation transforms that moment into a space for your loved one to grow.

This is where our witness lives. Because our witness is the difference. The shared space where those we know and love intimately and those we know less, connect with us. Everyone needs that spiritual safe space to grow. It is a space that we are committed to if we are living out “the measure of faith” God has given each of us.

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” –Romans 12:3, KJV.

Thank you, Amanda. And thank you human for being here for episode 50, my halfway point.

My space between.

Ephesians 1:17  I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.