the dream table

What do you get when you combine two incredibly extroverted friends, iced coffee, and an early Friday morning?  You get that table you wish you were not sitting by at Starbucks because you can no longer focus on your morning paper over the “oh myyy gossshh” and “that’s amazziinggg” and “I’m sooo exciteddd for youuu” statements.  My dear friend, Emily, and I… we are not quiet or shy with our emotion.  Pretty much if we think it, we say it, and when we say it, we feel it for each other.  It makes for one heck of a friendship.  It does not make for a good reading environment if you are anywhere near us and for that, I am sorry (kind of… because it is open seating at Starbucks, and you are more than welcome to either eavesdrop or move {insert somewhat smug smile here}).

I love this time.  And I love it even more now that Emily has deemed it our “dream table.” 

The conversations that happen around this table are a lot of things: they are hopeful and encouraging and sometimes thought provoking and often hard.  But they are always real.  One of us is confessing that we want to check our heart when it comes to material things, never replacing the Giver with the gift.  The other saying that she totally gets it, and has to remind herself all the time not to compare who has more or dresses better.  Then we talk about adoption (“does it sound crazy to you?”), serving out of our comfort zone (“should we put ourselves out there?”), church (“what did you get out of it?”), body image (“oh sheesh, it never gets better than college!”), raising kids (“how can I inspire them?”) … and how to live in the balance of all of those things with an accurate view of Jesus in the center of it all.  It is not easy to do that, and that is why we need the dream table.

Here are the rules for sitting at the dream table: You have to be 100% honest.  Whether we agree or disagree with each other, we have to say what we are really thinking no matter how much we know the other person won’t want to hear it, or else we won’t be growing—and therefore never really living.  You have to be 100% vulnerable.  If you aren’t willing to share the insecurities, the mistakes, or the depths of who you are and what you have been through with the people sitting across from you, the dream table is probably not going to be your thing.  And you have to be 100% there.  You have to fully guard that time at the dream table as sacred time, willing to learn, willing to put out of your mind the agenda for the rest of your day, willing to let some serious holy humbling happen to you.

The thing about life is that we don’t really know as much as we think we do.  Kristin wrote so beautifully last week about the few truths we really can hold on to in life, but outside of those, most of what we do and how we live is simply one foot in front of the other, often in the dark, sometimes feeling totally alone, and every once in a walking straight in to a wall when we were so sure the door was open.  I think we will live between the tensions of our lives here in this world and the desperate longing for our real home until the day we get there, and the answers about how to do that well are not always that tangible.  But to tell you the truth, I feel a lot closer to answers at the dream table.  If nothing else, I feel more confident in what that next step in the dark is or isn’t, because I was vulnerable enough to share it and my friend was honest enough to tell me what she thought.

A few years from now, we might look back at our time at the dream table and remember that it was the place so many ideas were born and encouraged, so many topics covered, so many tears cried, and so many prayers offered.  And what could be better than that?  If you can find a table and a few gals to pull up a chair and together put your messy lives out there, you’ll be better for it.  We have a mighty mission in front of us: doing our part to let God’s kingdom come on earth.  And we all have a part.  Learning how to live this out, in word and in action, just might start at your dream table.