Category: FemmeBytes by Sasha Katz

Dirty Laundry

On By femmefuelIn FemmeBytes by Sasha Katz, September 2011 (Authenticity)1 Comment

By AbbyA

Authenticity.  I am thinking about looking into someone’s eyes.  Rather simple.  We do it in conversation.  Over dinner.  The eyes are a window into the inner thoughts and soul of a person.

There are some eyes that have the gift of seeing the inside of you just by looking briefly into your own eyes.  You know this person, this gift, because even if you know them  – – surfacely – – even if they are an acquaintance – – when they look at you and you at them, you have to choose.

At that glancing moment, you can look away or look back.  If you look back, you have given them a window of opportunity.  They will see into your heartstrings.  The thoughts and feelings that you hold below the surface will be told to them through the language of the eyes.  But, if you look away, they will have known anyway that you have hidden within yourself your authenticity.

Your authenticity.  It is so easy to slant it.  Stuff it.  Perform it.  Deny it.  Look away and pretend that your heartstrings are playing to a happy song.  So easy to pretend that your inner thoughts are in complete harmony with your outer appearance.

Your authenticity.  It is your greatest mark of your individualism.  Your unique blueprint.  The greatest evidence of our Sovereign God.  And, we, in our great wisdom, decide to mask it, hide it, run from it.  Stuff it, slant it.  Deny it and perform it.

I know why.  We all know why.  There is a part of ourselves that is like a dryer.  It spins around – – sometimes you find a sock of shame.  Dirty underwear.  Embarrassing stains and soils.  Undergarments that make us feel self-conscious.  Rips and tears that show our age and maturity.  Tags that reveal both wealth and size.  We’ve all got our laundry spinning around in the dryer.

Authenticity.  It’s spinning.  No one knows, after the cycle, what will show up missing or later found.  No one really feels like hanging shirts or sorting socks.  No one likes wrinkles or pink-whites or crayon stains.  But we’ve all got it spinning in the dryer.

Authenticity.  You’ve got a Maker and a friend.  The Maker already knows your imperfections and your friend has some version of your own dirty laundry anyway.  Why not take a chance on the real you?  Why not take a chance with the one version of you that God felt so strongly about, so lovingly about, that He stamped you into time.  Authenticity, why not?

Eternal Friendships

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha KatzLeave a comment

By AbbyA

The friendships we form on earth are simply types and shadows of what our Creator wants from us, desires from us, needs from us. Friendships provide a mere taste, a slight glimpse into the very best God has specifically and uniquely designed for me and you. – JMathis

Types and Shadows.  Shadows of His Perfection.  Types of the way His Spirit reaches into our hearts and minds.  Types and Shadows.  He speaks to us in languages and through forums.  Ways in which we can know Him.  Through the Distance of Time.  Through the Seemingly Opaque Door of Eternity.  Through Friendships.

There is a seemingly opaque door with a window or maybe a linen screen.  There is a way in which to see in.  Through dreams in the night time.  Through views of nature that are so beautiful, you feel you can walk right through them.  Through places you see in your thoughts.  That you cannot place in reality.  But know undeniably they are there.  Through Friendships.

The neat thing about friendships is that it is one of the few things that we will take with us to eternity.  Many things will pass away as unnecessary when we trade in types and shadows for the face of Christ.  But Friendships.  It only makes sense that in our spiritual form, we will know one another.

In our spiritual form, we will have ways to share Me-Too moments that did not occur to us here.  We will have an entirely new set of Me-Toos to open up the door to shared purpose and shared experience.  In that perfection, in the supernatural way of the Father, even the forgotten pain and mutual hurt will deepen the closeness available through eternal friendships.

Perhaps I spend too much time in the possibility of what is to come.  But I cannot help to think that in the space of my imagination.  In the space that I dream about my Father’s home.  I am clothed and covered first in Him and then by . . . Friendships.

Cindy R. and Lynn O.

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha Katz2 Comments

By AbbyA

Why is it so hard for most of us?  Even walking into a small crowd makes you feel self-conscious.  You are thinking about who you are going to talk to or if anyone will be friendly towards you.  Even when you are invited.  Even if you are all there for a common reason.  Group gatherings make me feel a little nervous.

Just this week, my sweetie girlfriend Susie D. invited me to a back to school coffee fellowship.  I was bound to know a few of the ladies.  My friend Susie D. could not have been kinder introducing me to the few who I didn’t know . . . but no one I actually knew was on the left or right of me.  That feeling . . . time to strike up conversation . . . be charming . . . smile big.  Make a friend?  Group gatherings make me feel a little nervous.

My friend Cindy R. is an extremely Godly, perfect example of being a friend.  I joined a group where I didn’t know anyone.  She grabbed me on the very first day.  Even though she already had a lot of friends in this group, she decided to get to know me.  That certainly changed everything about being part of this group.  She gave me an invisible sticker right over my heart that spells BELONG.

Just because I love the leaders and girls in this group so much, I have to say more.  At the door leading to this group, there is some sort of symbolic garbage can.  Girls throw out their pride, tendency to compete, compare or judge and put on plain old friendliness.  The girls in this group make you feel so okay, so BELONG, that on my worst day, my very worst day, God reached out to me through them.

It was one of those days where all the prayer and faith in the world can’t stop the tremor shaking your core and stealing your very well-being.  I sat in my car weeping to my mother with no hope.  I was fighting depression, my broken marriage and experiencing the kind of pressure that can pop your brain.  I walked into where my group was gathering, told a friend that I needed a friend and fell apart into 1000 pieces in her arms.  Thank you, Lynn O.

Really girls, I don’t know why it means so much to BELONG.  I don’t know why fellowship sometimes feels so scary.  But I do know that fellowship is supposed to be about joy in your sisterhood.  Even if she’s not your best friend, you can stamp her with BELONG.  You can give her the freedom to come to you when she’s falling apart.  You can be Christ to her and hold her 1000 pieces together.

As is our human custom, we get things discombobulated in our imperfection.  We confuse fellowship with the requirements for joining a sorority or becoming a member of the Ocean Reef Club.  Then we act like the elite ladies in the dining room of the Titanic and give the cold shoulder to down to earth Molly Brown.  I think each of us knows what it feels like to be nervous in a group.  I think each of us knows what it feels like to want to make a friend.  To want a BELONG stamp.  Think about that.  You can do that for someone.  Forget what you know about fellowship and be a friend.

My Dad’s Friendships

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha KatzLeave a comment

By AbbyA

Most of you know about my daddy.  There are parts of my journey of being his daughter that didn’t really begin until I said goodbye to him on a cold, December morning.  His blue eyes that I stared into before he set out to heaven have become a sort of roadway into the man that I didn’t get to know every detail of while he lived here on planet earth.  Not to say that I didn’t know the depth of his love or how much he adored me.  It is the missing details.  But with God, all things are possible – – even finding the depths of a heart and soul after his time share on earth shifted to heaven.

After a long day at the football field, my loving husband drove the four of us to the beach.  A local dojo honored my dad and a few other fallen warriors at its annual seminar.  I had three people in mind to see.  Two were there.  A few more were unexpected.

Donna J. grabbed me and hugged me in her strong arms – – just after she had finished teaching her portion of the seminar.  She told me things like it had been too long, about her summer Alaskan trip.  She loved on my kids who were about the same age as me and my brother when she first met us.  She talked about my daddy.  About his faith and his perseverance in the last few months of his life.  This is what I hoped for.  I didn’t want these relationships to pass away with my dad.

I unexpectedly sat next to a gent who went to high school with my dad and trained in the same Miami dojo.  He told me my dad was “bad” in those days.  In the best kind of way.  🙂  I talked to another high school buddy who I hugged as he shed tears over my dad.  We exchanged contact info.  This is what I came here for.

In the blur of my dad’s funeral, I have in my heart many, many words of those who loved him, but fewer faces and names.  Fast forward a year and a half.  Ray P.  It was his dojo, his seminar.  His words.  His warm face that closed the seminar in a tradition of my father that I was not aware of.  He stood at the front of his dojo and asked each karateka to lower to bended knee and he prayed out loud over the day, over the people there and over the teachings of the day.   In the name of Jesus Christ.

You see, my dad found himself in front of seas of martial artists over the years.  Speaking and teaching.  Teaching and speaking.  People from all backgrounds with a common love for martial arts.  This I knew.  I also knew like the back of my hand his commitment to Jesus Christ.  I did not see in action nor fully know how he brought his faith into the limelight of his profession.  Thanks, Ray P.

When we had a chance to say hello, Ray P. told me that my dad opened and closed every seminar and symposium in prayer.  In the name of Jesus Christ.  I saw that God pressed on Ray P.’s heart to be bold with his faith.  He said that not every person would agree, but everyone respected my dad for his convictions.  I sense that Ray P. is expanding his faith with a gentle spirit and a love for Jesus.  His faith calls for that same respect within his reachable audience.

Thank you, God.  For my dad’s friendships.  Thank you God for building more of my dad in me through these friendships.  Through Ray P. and Donna J. and others, what is unknown is made near and known.  What God makes complete, Friends embellish.  There is no end to the unexpected ways that God decorates your soul.  Friends.  Friendship.  Thank you, God.

Christie A.

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha Katz3 Comments
Abby A and Christie A

By AbbyA

We walked into each other’s lives at a dinner party.  Her work colleague was my best friend N.  N’s last gift to me before moving far away was the promise that Christie A. and I would hit it off perfectly.  Towards the end of the party, we sat down at the long dinner table and confirmed the few things we both already knew.  Yes, we went to the same church.  We were both lawyers and fairly newly married.  That’s it and we were off to the beginning of one of the sweetest friendships I have ever known.

Christie A. is a tough cookie.  She flings words around like – See you later, loser or You’re a dork – like it’s nothin’.  Me, on the other hand, I have a medically confirmed non-existent level of testosterone and surplus of estrogen.  In other words, thin skin and sometimes fluffy.  Christie A. finds all of this hilarious and tells me that it explains a lot.

Christie A. and I share a seriousness about the things of God.  We have sat on her plump couch snuggled in blankets sharing our souls over conversations that I think must be in His Book of Remembrance.  Malachi 3:16.   She is the kind of friend that I get so excited to see – – so much so, because I know we will get a chance to talk about God and spiritual things late into the night.  She will undoubtedly offer for you to sleep over.  And, most of the time, you can’t resist the comfort or welcomeness of her home.

Christie A. loves things like Pepperidge Farms cookies and red wine.  She loves orange and blue together for some incomprehensible reason.  She loves her boy N.V. and her man.  She follows rules, breaks them when necessary and stands up to fight when she is called to it.

She’s undergone pain and loss.  First through almost losing her boy N.V. shortly after his birth.  Later through almost losing her marriage.  But this woman doesn’t clam up or give up.  Even when she is lying broken on the floor, she grasps onto truth and life.

God has plans for her beyond her wildest imagination.  I think she is in a place where she can see that now.  I am the friend who found just enough favor with the Lord to see just a glimpse of what is ahead of her.  I am the friend who at times has been able to share with her what I see in that glimpse.  God has made me one of the many vessels in her life.

And, she has been a vessel to me by leaning away from her tendency to be opaque.  By being transparent.  By choosing to trust me.  By telling the truth.  By being steadfast.  By prospering out of the pit.  By going against her grain to wear her heart on her sleeve just to be my friend.  That is my friend, Christie A.

Nicole W.

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha KatzLeave a comment
Flowers for you, Nicole W.

By AbbyA

Nicole W.  She was the love of my life for a very long time.  We rode bikes to restaurants on streets too fancy for college kids.  We stole toilet paper from the restaurant bathroom to stock up at home.  She regularly convinced me that Saturdays were for grabbing to-go daiquiris and hanging out the levy – – rather than for reading for class.   We painted our eyes with crayola glitter glue before we discovered fairy dust.  We argued women’s rights to conservative men while tipsy at the bar.  We walked the city blocks of New Orleans with the world at our feet.

Outside the nest of home, I never had the expectation of this kind of sisterly love.  I certainly had it with my mother and grandmother.  I had girlfriends along the way.  But my friendship with Nicole W. revealed to me what the heart of a friend felt like.  I didn’t know what it felt like to have a friend who would lay her life down for you.  I didn’t know what it felt like to be willing to lay your own life down for a friend.  This was and always will be my friendship with Nicole W.

After many years, this Fall, I have the great pleasure of attending her very first baby shower with a few other girls from this chapter of our lives.  So much time has passed.  She is a high-powered New Yorker with a long, impressive resume.  We are a long way from vowing to open a small shop in New Orleans selling hand-made tiaras.  I still like to think that we would have been quite successful at that.

Without sounding beyond my 36 years, I also like to think that these middle years are for Re-dreaming what seemed possible as a 20-year-old, empowered college student.  Re-connecting.  Warming my heart with thoughts of Nicole W.  Re-Flecting.  Looking in the mirror, into my lines and colors.  Seeing the depth of a friend that is set in those lines and colors.  Re-Vealing that friends are not just part of time but part of identity.  Nicole W. is one of those friends for me.

High Drama

On By femmefuelIn August 2011 (Cultivating Friendships), FemmeBytes by Sasha KatzLeave a comment
The Infamous Picture

By AbbyA

Since we are reminiscing about old friends, I have a sad story to tell.  In fact, I don’t really want to tell it at all.  Because it makes me feel uncomfortable – – somewhere in between convicted and justified.  I think that’s called confusion.  Unless, of course, you can be both at the same time.

I was a part of a very close-knit group of girls through high school and middle school.  We traveled in a pack.  Ganged up on girls who dated our ex-boyfriends (or cheated with our boyfriends.)  High Drama.  Talked through the night until the phone fell off our ear.  High Drama.  Cried when we were happy and sad.  High Drama.  Drove each other home from school.  Drove around town on Friday and Saturday nights.  Solved our parents’ problems.  High Drama.  Lied about our age.  High Drama.  Burned at the beach together.  Ate whole pizzas.  Babysat siblings together.  Ransacked older brothers’ parties together.  We were a pack.  A High Drama Pack.

The pack went two directions after high school.  I went west to Louisiana and the rest headed to Seminole Territory.  Seems fairly natural except I was the only one who split.  There were plenty of meet-ups on holidays and summers.  But the bottom line was, for the most part, they were all together, and I was not.

There is a lifetime between then and now.  But that was the beginning of distance.  There was a wedding early on and it already felt weird.  I was pretty close to an outsider even though I was a bridesmaid.  There was a post college European trip where one of the gang came along with my college friends.  That was a severe disaster.  The story escalated to High Drama – –  “she” was left in Czech Republic while the three of “us” moved on to . . .  some other country.  There is only a grain of truth in that High Drama.  She was left at the train station a few exits from the hotel . . . whatever . . . I have no good explanation for it and I apologized to her about five years ago.  Anyway . . .

The distance didn’t end there.  To make matters worse, I headed off to law school.  Experienced personal drama.  Stopped talking to just about everyone for about twelve months.  When I came out of shock, I was too embarrassed to get back in touch with anyone.  There are many ways to tell this story, but I had the mindset that they perceived that my silence was the equivalent of me escalating myself above our friendships.  So I clammed up and handled it badly when I finally ran into one of them.  High Drama.

And then came Facebook.  I attempted to befriend them a few years ago, but no one really responded.  I think I am a “friend” of only one of these girls.  I guess you can call that Low Drama.  Lately, I have been trying to be a better Facebook friend – – trying to read threads and comment on pictures.  Curs’ed me.  High Drama.  I saw the whole slew of them on a reunion vacation together.  Every last one of them.   I even commented that they all looked beautiful.  No response.  High Drama.

This leads me to my current feeling of both conviction and justification.  On the one hand, we grew apart.  How many letters did I write those girls in college?  I don’t think anyone ever wrote back.  I moved on to what really was God’s plan for my life.  Justification.  In the rumble of growing up, I didn’t look back at the dust I left behind.  Perhaps I should have been kinder and more thoughtful.  Conviction.  High Drama.  I think it’s called confusion.  Unless, of course, you can be both at the same time.