My voice rings throughout the house, Faith! Cora! I hear nothing in return from my daughter and her friend. I walk out the front door calling their names again, and immediately hear laughter from the scarlet maple near the porch. I see Faith right away, but Cora takes a bit of searching. She hides in plain sight amongst the branches.
Every whipstitch, what I want to find but can’t see sits right in front of me, hiding in plain sight.
***
Every whipstitch, I send a text then immediately want to rewind time and take it back.
Or rather hide it from plain sight.
This happened recently after a dear friend kindly texted me to say she was praying for me. She knew my daddy’s health weighed heavily on my mind as I stared down a massive writing deadline. I replied thank you for your prayers and told her how much I needed and appreciated them. A short time later, I took the opportunity to ask this same approachable friend a writing question about something that worried and frustrated me all at once. And that’s the text I wanted to take back because after sending it, I realized how wildly vulnerable it made me look.
My mind proceeded to list a reel of reasons why this follow-up text was a bad idea:
Look at you barging in on her time with your lame “problems.”
Why are you giving a voice to this stupid thing?
You do realize your words in that text leaked ridiculous insecurity, don’t you?
I plopped on my bed, set my phone on my nightstand and sighed. By placing those see-through words in plain view of someone else, I felt like I I had walked into a room wearing a sundress and noticed everyone else wearing jeans and long-sleeved shirts. I felt overdressed–or rather overexposed–for the occasion.
So in an effort to cover up and feel less out of place, I picked my phone up from my nightstand and wrote back the following text:
“I’m so sorry for complaining. Just pretend I never asked that last question and I’ll blame my rambling on having a long, emotional week.”
It was my way of dashing to the closet and picking out the first thing I saw to cover up in–like a turtleneck or some other up-to-the-neck shirt. I still felt silly about it all (because who wears a turtleneck over a sundress?), but at least I was less out there, less exposed.
Continue reading here to see how the story unfolds as well as share your own story of friendship?