The Fosters

So I have kinda gotten into a new ABC Family tv show recently entitled The Fosters. I’m sure none of the people that read this watch it, but it is actually pretty good. I was watching the season finale last night and thinking how appreciative I am of this show. Let me explain. 

So the show is about a family, half made up of foster kids, half adopted kids, and one biological son. One parent is a cop, another a school vice principle I believe. It follows the lives of all the kids and the parents and the trouble the kids get into and the dynamic  of the foster kids entering this house and the family having to deal not only with that but just everyday happenings of life and teenagers. I was a little concerned and nervous to watch it at first, because the two parents I have mentioned are both female. I didn’t want this show to end up being the next glee, in that they start to sound all preachy and every episode has to have some sort of social issue and PSA involved. TV shows can be so political sometimes, and while it isn’t a terrible thing to sometimes touch on these topics, sometimes it can be a little much. 

I know for a good amount of this country still, they don’t see this as a normal family. Or don’t accept it or would kinda turn the other way. I know this isn’t the first time TV shows have shown a family with a gay couple, but it is the first of its kind and it has changed my thoughts about my own future. I know there are shows out there like Modern Family and that is greatly successful and sure there are gay characters on shows more often, but this is the first time there has been a show strictly centering around one family that is lead by a gay couple. Think of all the shows that are centered around a certain family, from even the beginning of tv and movies...I Love Lucy, The Cosby Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, The Middle, you get the point. All about just normal families and everyday life. The thing I love about this show, is that it shows the same thing. There is no difference. We are all just one family. Two people just doing the best they can to raise their kids in a loving, caring household. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely times when politics gets thrown in your face a little bit, but as the deal with life in general. The reason this show has impacted me is because it has shown life with such normalness (which I will now call a word.) When you hear for so long that gay people shouldn’t be able to get married and have kids, maybe sometimes you just believe them and lose the will to even think otherwise anymore. For the past little while, I would say that I’m never getting married and I would probably never have kids either. It all just seemed like such a foreign concept to me. No one would ever approve. Everyone would look at me weird. My family would judge me. Society would judge me. If I ever had kids, what emotional scarring would I alreadyyyyy inflict on a child by me, being gay, being their mom. I just can’t deal with that type of pressure. The thing about this show though, is that it is so normal. They are just like every other family. They love their kids and their kids love them. These kids needed a loving home and with the Fosters, they got one. 

In last nights episode, the 2 moms got married. I felt I was watching what would be my emotions in the character of Steph. She never really wanted to get married. I guess she was a little just bitter about it. Her dad didn’t want to go, and she was having a conversation with him, saying that maybe she didn’t want to get married because she thought it was weird too...two girls standing up there. Who would even walk down the isle? This is silly. But then she realized, she didn’t want to not get married because they were her feelings, but because they were her dads. She believed and had it ingrained in her that 2 females can’t marry and it would be weird. So she lived with that all her life. Here she was, in a loving, long term relationship with 3 kids and 2 foster kids, and yet still couldn’t bring herself to get married. Until she realized she could. That all of those thoughts weren’t hers but those thrown upon her. 

Now I’m not saying this to all of the sudden announce that I am going to have a wedding and raise a heap of kids, but I am saying that I like my life better knowing it is a possibility. That possibly, maybe, someday I would want a normal life too. Being able to settle down with someone I love and maybe even have kids. Invite kids that don’t have a family into mine. Love them like I have been loved. And maybe I am still not keen on the idea of marriage, but maybe one day I will be. And if you don’t believe I should be, then you don’t have to come….as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t want you to come. No offense, but, I guess you can just pick and choose the status updates you like of mine on Facebook and I would just have the people that supported me there. (It’ll never happen, so you can just calm down) 

Anyway, all of this to say, this show has got me thinking. I think it is good for America, it’s good for me, it’s good for everyone in general. And not just for showing a family with 2 moms, but with adopted and fostered kids as well. I have heard a lot of good things from that community about how they are tackling those subjects and how foster kids and adopted kids are happy to finally see some representation of their own on tv. It’s finally widening the scope of visibility for a lot of different people, and I really like that. 

The Art of Friendship

Proverbs 17:17

"A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity." 

Today we started a new series at Mosaic entitled Match. Looking at our relationships and seeing best how they can be fostered to form close, meaningful connections with those in our lives. The first in our series was entitled the art of friendship. Friendship is a very important thing to have in one's life, knowledge gained from being on both sides of that coin. Friendship is an important thing to have in pretty much almost all and any of your relationships, be it romantic or not. But today, we are talking about just straight up friendship, from one person to another.

In our realm of people we interact with, we have a community of people we talk to (some could call it a group of acquaintances) and we have friends. The first wall you cross from being in one's community to one's friendship is vulnerability. Once you are vulnerable with each other, it opens up the conversation to get to know each other in a more meaningful way. The problem with vulnerability, however, is that people sometimes use disclosure instead of being vulnerable, and they are not the same thing. This is one of my problems, in that even with this blog I feel like I disclose a good amount of my life, so while it may seem like you may know me because of the things I disclose, it isn't a relationship we are forming, it isn't the type of vulnerable that breaks down walls.

The next phase that builds friendships is confidence. Confidence, loyalty, and forgiveness. These all kind of go hand in hand. You want a friend who is loyal, who you can be confident in, that will be trustworthy with your vulnerability. Someone is who is always on your side....a friend who loves at all times.

Forgiveness. The people who are closest to you forgive you the most. You have to live in a state of forgiveness. People tend to hurt the people they love and care about more than anyone. Friendship is about looking over the million little things we do wrong and love them anyway. I feel the need to text my friends and thank them for forgiving me a thousand times. I screw up, I make mistakes, I act like an idiot, and forgiveness is essential in this thing we call friendship.

Friendships are serious business. They tie our futures together. They are the people we share our lives with and invest in. The people we go to when things aren't going great and still the same people we go to to celebrate when they are.

As much as I say I like to be alone and am a loner, my life would not be even remotely as full if I didn't have my friends. As James Taylor would put it, "i've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend." The happiest times of my life have been when I was surrounded by my friends. I feel like my social anxiety and fear of rejection and whatever else I blogged about last kept me from fully investing in so many relationships. I build a good amount of walls because sometimes maybe I don't want to seem weak or needy. I like being independent and not thinking I have to rely on anyone or need anyone....this just secluded myself even more and always leaves me on the outside looking in (which is a rather lonely place I have come to find.) When you become vulnerable with other people and let them in, friendships are able to grow and life becomes even more beautiful because you have more people to share it with.

Annie Grace Shaffer, the best friend I could ever ask for. I have no idea what in the world I would do without her in my life. God bless her heart I am such a hard person to be friends with and she just stuck it out, i'm not even sure why....only because, like I said, she is the best friend I could ask for. The thing is, with all of my pitfalls I have blogged about, excluding people from my life is one of the side effects and that makes it hard to foster friendships, but Annie still did it and i'm so glad she did. These type of friendships gives me such a comfort knowing that when I am at work doing a lock-up and I have things going through my head with no cell service to consult anyone, my first thought is to write to Annie on the back of my sides. Knowing that I can go to her with anything and she will listen. That no matter what I do, she always forgives me and loves me anyway. Now that is friendship.

If I wrote about all my friendships I know you'd get bored, but I feel like i'm finally at the point in my life that I am surrounded by such a great group of people, where I finally have a nice core group of friends that I have been able to overcome my insecurities and be vulnerable with them and share my life with them, that I just need to share. I can't go on without also mentioning Aaron. My self proclaimed life partner and soul mate, it would seem. The amount of ease in conversation I have with sharing just anything about life with this kid is just....very comforting. I love having that person in my life, where we can sit on a swingset at night and just talk about how great our futures are gonna be, or go driving around for hours discussing our problems and talking through them together. Him putting up with me when I vent with him about certain people and crushes that i'm sure he could care less about. (sorry bout it, aaron, haha) Having that type of friendship makes the little things like finding fried chicken, walking around the beach, or going to a gibbon conservatory even more fun.

I can't keep writing paragraphs, but my roommates Erica and Kelly, some of my best friends here in LA as well. Never did I think I would enjoy someone just barging into my room (with a cat nonetheless) to talk. Never have I really had that living situation where I was always living with people I could have such good conversations with. From discussing our need to get more involved in volunteering and about our relationship with God and other people...to having them deal with my ramblings about my social awkwardness with people. (And then random spouts of getting mad at one another before emerging again to eat some sort of dessert or food together because getting frustrated with people and situations is life and hey, that too grows friendships, haha)

Anyway, all of this to say, friendships are important. I feel like they are probably even the building blocks to a happy and healthy life. It takes time, it takes commitment, it takes forgiveness, it takes vulnerability and confidence, but they are relationships that last a lifetime. Start building those bridges and investing in people, it is one of the best decisions i've ever made.

(also need to give a shout-out to another of my closest friends here, Edwin, who too has had to deal with my ridiculous musings, but who we have so much fun together and who also keeps me warm when the beach on the 4th of July is freaking freezing!)