you are real – you wear skin like me
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
I’ve never made friends easily. I am blunt and too unselfconscious of my own unselfconscious lack of tact. I have been called a “catalyst.” When I enter a relationship, things change. I also moved every couple of years for most of my life, and my dearest friends live miles and miles away, live their own lives, and we write occasional letters and sometimes catch up in person, when life allows.
I don’t know what having real life friends looks like. I started to know in college, but then I got sick, started collapsing all over the place, and I moved off campus, got an upstairs job that didn’t allow much time for friendships, and dropped out of school. What would it be like, I wonder, to have a girlfriend who lives in my town, someone to meet for shopping and playdates and real life hugs? I sigh, suspecting that between my health issues and my kids, I wouldn’t have time to hang out anyway.
I spend a lot of time online between my photography work and my design work, and it would be pretty lonely, except for the people I’ve met here.
It was October or November last year, I think, that I’d finally passed through my morning sickness enough to look at a computer screen. I wanted to hang out online, but I was feeling too weak to take on the Flickr/photography community I’d pursued away from life earlier in the year. I didn’t have energy to sift through my reading, looking for God, holding the good, tossing the bad.
So I started a blog search, looking for people who were writing real about truth and about God, and I stumbled across High Calling Blogs, where people were writing and sharing about living every aspect of their lives for God – in the real world. I hit the jackpot.
Through the last months of my pregnancy and most of this year, these are the people who have been my community – who have taught me community. And this online fellowship has spilled over into real life. They are my coworkers, my clients, my friends. I cry with them and laugh with them (and at them sometimes) and talk about them to my husband.
I met Lyla on phone over a design issue. I’ve had real emails in my box from Ann and Maureen and Karen and Michelle and Cassandra. L.L. Barkat bought a photo. Billy Coffey lives in my old state and does things my husband says and does – only not online. I would love to meet his wife – I suspect we’d get along! I’ve worked with Claire on numerous photography projects, and we’re doing a photography collaboration now, with my friend Sarah. (You really should check that out, share a photo of your own!)
The encouragement I’ve received from Glynn and Laura and Jennifer is real encouragement, and Joy and her husband spoke into our story in a way most of our real life friends would never dream. I call Joy now and she calls me, and we listen to our kids in the background and say the same things and laugh at each other, hearing what we sound like when we’re not writing on blog. I actually met Erin in real life, about ten years ago.
Something happens here. I think we say what we mean to say on our blogs – and we say the things that matter. We don’t need to worry about issue-skirting, elephant-avoiding, or over-necessary niceties. We go to different churches, live in different places, write with different voices – but we all wear skin, and we meet each other here, in our real.
Real is a choice – online or off. You can wear your skin online and live real here, miles apart. I do, and these others do too. God gave me a very big gift in these I have come to love. Getting to eternity and sharing the rest of our stories? That’s going to be fun.
No. 1 — July 28th, 2010 at 10:37 am
I feel the same way about having girlfriends. I just don’t have much time. I love online. :)
Erin´s last [type] ..A Little Cousin Singy Goodness
No. 2 — July 28th, 2010 at 11:01 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Glynn Young, Kelly Langner Sauer. Kelly Langner Sauer said: "You Wear Skin Like Me" – posting with @thehighcalling about my real friends online. http://bit.ly/9nIV3K [...]
No. 3 — July 28th, 2010 at 11:20 am
I’m blessed to have met you Kelly, online seems very real to me, a different real,
but invaluable.
deb´s last [type] ..becoming
No. 4 — July 28th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Your photography and words have been months of treats. It’s a delight to have you as a friend.
Maureen´s last [type] ..Monday Muse- Alaskas State Writer Laureate
No. 5 — July 28th, 2010 at 11:38 am
You bless me too, Kelly, in words and images. In your realness, your honesty, your love for our creator.
Michelle DeRusha´s last [type] ..Gone Before We Know It
No. 6 — July 28th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Sometimes it is more real here because we share so much of our hearts.
Cassandra Frear´s last [type] ..Biscuit Weather
No. 7 — July 28th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Kelly, you were one of the first people I interacted with online. You have encouraged me and been more of a real friend to me than many of the people who live around me. I’m so grateful to have met you and always enjoy reading what you write and see the pictures you post. :) Have a great day Kelly!
Melissa Brotherton´s last [type] ..Editing & Processing
No. 8 — July 28th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of that blunt :) and I love you for that. Because blunt from you doesn’t come from nowhere and is gentle and wide and welcoming. So I’ll take that any day of the week over tepid head-nodding.
One need never ask if you are real. Please keep being that.
Lyla Lindquist´s last [type] ..Prayer as Argument
No. 9 — July 28th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I am so glad we wear skin, and love to write, and have found each other. Thank you for journeying with me, and thank you for letting me be part of yours!
Under His Sun, by His Grace.
Becky
Becky@ Daily On My Way To Heaven´s last [type] ..Opening Your Home and Heart
No. 10 — July 28th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
so tenderly beautiful that you were able to forge such an amazing community of soul friendships…
No. 11 — July 28th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
this is so true.
i can’t imagine you as a blunt person … its fascinating to me how our perceptions of people because of the visual or stylistic impressions of their weblog can be so different from “real life”. (for example, my readers are forever calling me “calm”!) that’s one of the things i like about weblogging – you can so often express a side of yourself that might not emerge during face-to-face interactions but is just as much the real you.
No. 12 — July 28th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
reading this made me cry because i have the hardest time making friends and since moving here i haven’t made any. i know people here but aside from my husband, there is no one i’d like to sneak out with at night for chit chat and a coffee. there is no one to call when it’s been one of those days. it’s hard to not have those kinds of friends when you’re constantly pouring out to littles, juggling demands, etc.
i had a knitting blog for 4 years and through it i met my friend – she lives in canada, i live in louisiana but we talk and the connection is so very important to me. she gets me, she truly understands me and she is invaluable to me. i’m her cheerleader through her illness and struggles, i listen to the tales of pain and woe and i hope i let her know that she is valuable despite the chronic fatigue and other problems. i can only hope she knows how much the connection and love she offered has meant. and i hope she knows she’s priceless to me.
amanda´s last [type] ..…
No. 13 — July 28th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
At times “here” feels more real than the life I can touch around me – when God is in it.. it is real indeed!
HisFireFly´s last [type] ..Real Stuff – Real People
No. 14 — July 28th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
It’s easier for me to express my true feelings here. I think better when I’m writing. I don’t know if that is completely real…because in real life I’m so much less eloquent and expressive…but it helps me sort and understand. I love this virtual place. I think it’s relatively easy to see when someone is being real here, or if they are just selling something.
joann´s last [type] ..Love and Other Fruit
No. 15 — July 29th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
[...] You Wear Skin Like Me [...]
No. 16 — July 30th, 2010 at 7:44 am
You gave voice to thoughts that have been swirling since I stumbled onto this amazing world just a couple months ago. I was just raving to my husband last night about the incredible, REAL women I am meeting. In many ways, they seem like the “real friends”. “Something happens here. I think we say what we mean to say on our blogs – and we say the things that matter.” So true! I am finding myself challenged to live like I’m learning to write . . vulnerable, fearless, true. Thank you!
Kim Hyland´s last [type] ..Potters Prerogative
No. 17 — July 30th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
This is a world in which it is no trespass when we step into the garden along the side of the road and into another world, where dreams and thoughts meet immediately and the guardians along the way smile benevolently as we gaze about in wonder at the similarities that illuminate the glorious beauty of the differences. It seems odd for my best friend to be six hours of time away even when we speak directly over Skype so she is morning and I am night, and we laugh because neither of us has been to bed and one is nocturnal.
And then to find my thoughts exposed as if in a mirror too fragile which I thought broken, but find is simply turned sideways and now the reflection is not my own, but you, and in you it is beautiful, so I find it alright to remain as I am, if it means I am a little like you who I admire. But the troubles are the same and the clarity comes as we touch, palm to palm, on either side of the surface between us, and smile at the changing sameness of patterned growth and revel in the intricacy of the differences that make it a wonder to view the artistry of He who shimmers between and within, making the opaque translucent in the light of His presence. And it is no trespass to discover the intangible joys to share beyond where the boundaries of the tangible run deep and divisive, too close to bear the motion of the dance of the heart.
Karenee´s last [type] ..What should a bio look like