My Social Media-less Life

Against most of my friends’ better judgment, I am back sitting for some people.

To be fair, every person I’m sitting for falls under one of two categories:
– people I chose not to tell because they hardly ever ask for help, or
– people that are more friends than they ever were clients.

This week, I’m sitting for some people I haven’t sat for since February of 2020. The good ole ‘Vid hadn’t locked down the country yet and people could just cough on each other all willy-nilly.

The exception with this time from the last (minus the amount of animals) is that the adult daughter of this friend has chosen to stay home. So I am sharing a house with her. That’s never been a big deal, sharing a house with another housemate. Honestly, I have stopped watching people’s animals because they would never tell me when people would be at the house and it made it extremely weird and difficult to get into any kind of rhythm with the animals. At least this way I knew what I was walking into… in every sense of the word.

In this case however, the daughter has some health issues and mainly chose to stay home just to keep things simple… and also to have something of a staycation from the family.

I don’t blame her; there are some trips my parents took after I became an adult and still lived at home where I opted not to go, and to this day I fondly remember those staycations.

Monday was the first day of this sitting adventure and I got to have a real conversation with the daughter for the first time ever, since she’s been sick the entire time I’ve really known her whole family. Because she’s such an introvert, her parents didn’t think I would even see her unless there was an issue.

As of today, I’ve seen her twice… and for an hour or so each time. And there have been no real issues to speak of. But I can confirm she’s a very loquacious person. As an extrovert, I am not mad in the slightest about this fun turn of events.

But I realized with her wanting to hang out and with the way the cats have all come out of their usual hiding places to be near me (even if from a five-to-ten-foot distance), that I bring something to the table in situations that– maybe everyone else saw it, but I certainly didn’t– really brings out… well… everything. What is that something?

Peace. Or, said differently, safety.

That’s not to say that nobody else brings peace or that I’m the only one that has this gift of making people feel safe, but sitting animals and having them show you they trust you by the end of day two when you were told they would be invisible for much of the time their people were gone is more than just knowing how animals think.

Memory unlocked:

I remember once that a friend of mine that I went to ministry school with wrote me a note (maybe for an assignment?) that said I always bring peace to any situation and they were glad they could count on me to be that way… and I was disappointed by that. It wasn’t my joy or my sense of humor or my uncanny ability to go with the flow that they chose to highlight. No, it was something much deeper than that, but for me at that time, it didn’t even sound like me.

“I’m the peaceful one?” I thought to myself doubtfully. “In a class of ten people, some of whom seem to carry far more peace than I do in a day, and they picked me for this note? Half the time I can barely even keep a secret and I feel like I’m all over the place mentally. Is that peace?”

In hindsight, I realized that’s always been who I am. That’s why, whenever I unintentionally broke someone’s trust, they seem devastated. Obviously breaking someone’s trust is a whole different issue for another day, but the point still stands: people trust me because I carry myself in a way that says, “Not only can you trust me, but you can trust The One I’ve brought with me into this situation.”

Even if those people don’t know about Jesus… or even if they do, sometimes there are those people in life that one just knows, “this person is safe.”

In the past 3-5 years, I’ve learned to really tap into that “peace and safety” gifting in a way that’s not loud and obnoxious, and it’s opened a lot of doors for me. Metaphorically and physically. I’ve also learned that you can still carry that peace and feeling of “I’m a safe person” while also having internal turmoil (whether that be circumstantial or something else). It’s a form of compartmentalizing and not projecting what’s going on inside with what might be happening outside of you.

(This is why it’s good to have friends you can unload all of the things on as well, so they can help you figure out what’s going on and how to fix it… otherwise you’ll just get stuck in an endless cycle of being stuck in your own problems while trying to fix everyone else’s instead of just being… and that’s not a good way to live either.)

One of the other big things I’ve noticed about this “gift” is that I never know how to fix all of the problems. In fact, 9 times out of 10, I’m asking someone else for a solution to a problem– even one that’s not mine– just because I feel as though I won’t be able to rest well until I have an answer. Whether the person with the actual problem ever needs the solution I’ve come up with… well… maybe they never will.

Or maybe they will and will never ask for my opinion. Sometimes that’s what I would call a “downside” to this gift… but the thing about peace and safety is that the one bringing those to the table rarely needs to be the one with the solutions. In fact, the one missing out on peace might already have the solution and just needed to talk to someone different… someone safe.

In closing…

Being a “person of peace” is not something that is unique to me. You can have other gifts, talents, and strengths and still be a safe person. Being a safe person requires making an effort though; until a few years ago, I didn’t realize how much. But anyone can do it, even if it’s just in a small way. 🙂