Learning to Share

Sharing is a thing I don't do we'll. Too often I figure I'm just far too selfish to want to share with other people, but maybe my heart needs some healing. Maybe I'm selfish, but maybe I'm afraid of slipping from the place where we've been planted, from the safe strongholds that have brought so much healing.

I understand that sharing a bowl of curry isn't going to hurt me, and somedays I really don't want to share my curry. And I know that sharing a skirt that has no sentimental value is going to be just fine. I get that. I share living space pretty well these days, and dirty dishes in the sink don't bother me like they used to. In fact I prefer to share some things. I prefer sharing a tent when camping, or a pot of coffee, a good book with lots of underlining, or a ride to the beach or mountains. However there are some things I'm having difficulty sharing lately. 

Yesterday I was on Hayden Lake. The glorious jewel of a lake that has been my summer home for ten years until now. While we were cruising around the lake on my parents' boat I couldn't help but miss my days as one of the camps wakeboard instructors. The days when I spent 10 hours a day driving boats, surfing, swimming, teaching from the dock and the early morning staff ski runs. I miss the chaos. I miss the monotony. I miss the rush, the trees, the water, the safety of it all. And now I see it as an outsider, from a distance and it's so hard for me to share a place that holds those memories. They never belonged to just one of us, but I like to think that those were the years that made me who I am and now I'm sharing that time and influence with others, most of whom I don't even know. It's a hard pill to swallow. To trust that those staff members now will enjoy and mature through the gifts that place produces. 

Along with the thought of sharing my favorite place in the whole world with strangers, I'm bombarded everyday with the eternal fact that I am going to be sharing my best friends with their husbands soon. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited for each of them and for the loving people they have found to share their passions with. I'm excited that they feel like the luckiest girls in the world with these great men, it makes my heart giddy for them. However, there's a big piece of me that wants it to be the way it always has been. What about the years we spent single spinsters together, roaming the world for adventure and dreaming of one day being healed enough to fall in love. All of our dreams, late nights talking in front of the fireplace sprawled out on the living room floor covered in comforters. Will those times be forgotten? 

The ideas of being the last one standing, sharing my friends with their husbands and then there kids, who will I share things with? Where does that leave me? Of course, I may very we'll be in a foreign country in a brief time, but I'm not ready to share my favorite people with somebody else yet. I'd rather share my favorite curry or book. Maybe that would be acceptable at the alter instead of my best friends. 

Someday, maybe I'll have to ask my friends to share me with a loving man who tells me I'm the most beautiful woman every single day. But if not, I hope they know that they have been a huge part in this thing called life and it's not that I'm selfish or jealous, but that they have been some of the strongest holds in my life and it's hard to imagine sharing those holds with someone else.