Witness

The other night I looked over at my husband and noticed some new lines around his eyes, a few gray hairs sprinkled at his temples. He is one of the lucky ones who gets better looking each year; and somehow in that moment I felt intensely aware of the years that have passed since we first met, of the changes that have taken place, not just in our faces and hair, but in our hearts and minds and very selves.

And I was struck that I have been a witness to so many of his changes. I’ve been around for so much of the joy and laughter and so many of the tears, for the sleepless nights, awake with babies and worry and indecision. When we met he was a 21 year-old unemployed drummer, obsessed with cars and music, using cardboard boxes for chairs in his apartment. Now he owns his own business, cares for our kids, loves and serves our community, and has a wisdom and security I never imagined in the early days. And I’ve been there for all of it.

I’ve been a witness to his life and he has been a witness to mine. It’s a simple act, but it feels so deeply profound. It is so richly valuable to be able to look at someone else’s life and say, “I saw that. I was there for that. I saw your feelings and I see how you’ve changed, and it all matters.” It is a profound gift to know that there is someone who holds your memories, your stories, your laugh lines and gray hairs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media lately, about why it holds such a powerful allure. And I wonder if, at its core, social media offers the façade of a world of witnesses. Every like or comment or share feels like confirmation that we are here, that our hearts and stories are real and that they matter.

And it’s tragic that it’s just a façade, that social media cannot offer a real, meaningful witness. We crave that; we need it at our deepest level. We are relational beings, created to need relationships for our very physical and emotional survival. And social media offers that in the same way that cotton candy masquerades as real food. It can be sweet and serve a purpose, but it’s never going to fill you up or legitimately nourish you.

We need real, face to face, flesh and blood, human interaction. We need people who are in our lives and our homes and our days. We need people who see us as we are, who don’t just see the images with the dirty laundry cropped out and the flattering filters in place. We need people who see us laugh so hard we fall off our chairs and cry over things that seem like they shouldn’t be a big deal.

There are so many spaces where this can happen. It can be shivering on the soccer field together week after week, sharing umbrellas and cheering for each other’s kids. It can be sitting side by side in worship. It can be over dinner or text or in the copy room at work. There’s no magic formula, but we need witnesses to our lives and we need to offer a meaningful witness to those around us.

In the last few years I’ve had the gift of deeply reconnecting with friends from my childhood and young adult years. And I’ve noticed that there is an ease of conversation, a shorthand that we slip back into. It comes from knowing each other’s families and pasts, from loving each other in the most awkward of years and stages, and from honoring the ways we have grown and changed since.

You can be a witness for a moment, a season, or a lifetime. But there is a profound gift in seeing another person and validating that their heart and their story matter deeply.

We are moving on on the holiday season, and I want to intentionally offer my family and friends the gift of a real witness, and I am going to work on receiving the gifts that they have to offer me. I challenge you to do the same.

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