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Friends Around the Table with Tracy Johnson and Beth Bruno
204 Plays1 year ago
As the holiday season draws near, Tracy Johnson and Beth Bruno reflect about the magic and memories that unfold when we share our tables with friends and family. Savor their stories in this season 1 finale of the Red Tent Living Podcast, and dare to imagine new ways that you can cultivate belonging around your own table.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living. And, to sign up for your free monthly Red Tent Dinner Kit download, visit RedTentLiving.com/dinners.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Tracy Johnson and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. This season, we tackle the messy truths of friendship. I'm excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to the last episode of season one of the Red Tent Living Podcast.
Thanksgiving Stories and Friendship
00:00:23
Speaker
Our theme for today is friends around the table and the conversation is between Beth Bruno and me. Beth and I are both good friends and have hosted a number of tables together, so it was really fun for us to
00:00:39
Speaker
sit and share these stories with one another. I think you'll find them to be tender and timely as you head into whatever this week, Thanksgiving week is holding for you. So here you go, the conversation between Beth and me. Hello. Hello. How are you today?
00:01:01
Speaker
I am glad that we are here and that we are doing this. It has felt like a bit more of a challenge to get here than I had anticipated today. Often the case. I'm looking forward to talking with you about friends at the table. We have been friends at the same table a few times. We have created a lot of beautiful things at the table together. We have. Who should go first? Do you want to read first or would you rather have me go? I can read first. Okay. I was thinking of you as I
00:01:31
Speaker
wrote this since I just recently took you back into kind of this part of my life and this world that I described. So you were on my mind even as I was writing this particular story.
00:01:46
Speaker
I still hold so many vivid details to this memory. We are in there flat with the yellow walls and the shabby blue chic cabinet they shipped from the States, the vintage couch and upholstered rocking chair, all secondhand ministry furniture she couldn't part with, and clues to her soul I would slowly begin to piece together.
The Need for Deep Friendships
00:02:09
Speaker
Our five kids at the time, mostly all with their own age match, are playing down the hall.
00:02:15
Speaker
Two bickering, like brother and sister, and the oldest two thickest thieves. They got married at the last conference, instructing a childcare worker to hold up a Bible and everything to seal their union. They are five. The four adults are at the pine table with white spindle legs, and I'm about to say the most vulnerable thing I've said as an adult. We so badly need this conversation to go well.
00:02:42
Speaker
I can still feel the weight of my words in my chest. It had been almost two years of overlapping in our organization in the same city. And in that time, we had each built separate teams of mostly interns and short-term groups, all single, all young. The other families in our orbit either reported to us or supervised us or were another nationality, bringing challenges to intimacy and connection.
00:03:08
Speaker
I felt like I had one safe friend in another city whose frequent visits kept me going. But as a couple, as a young family, we were alone in a crowd of coworkers.
00:03:20
Speaker
The fishbowl life was excruciating. In our home country, donors, friends, and family members watched and drew conclusions. In our host country, nationals noted our differences. And as leaders, those beneath us, so to speak, were not merely friends and colleagues. And those above us never felt fully safe. We needed, we longed for, lateral friends.
00:03:45
Speaker
People who understood expat life in our country with our organization, but were not in our food chain. There was one couple who fit that description and thankfully we liked each other. But getting along as families, as kids and spouses had only taken us so far. Our hearts longed for more depth and eventually we realized we would need to actually speak aloud our desire. So there we are sitting at that table
00:04:13
Speaker
with the same anxiety you'd imagine having in a DTR about dating. How do you tell another couple you'd like to be closer, that you need their friendship desperately and are inviting them to more? How do you say to this man that's not your husband, I need your brotherhood and invite her to be a sister to your spouse? There's just no pattern for this. We were awkward and nervous in all the ways you're picturing right now.
00:04:44
Speaker
Their response was so sweet, affirming, welcoming, knowing. That night at that table, we entered into a new level of friendship. The kind that gets to be more honest because you've bared your heart.
00:04:59
Speaker
the kind we would need in the years to come. In many ways that conversation anchored us to the work and the place for as long as it did. It was brave and so very mature. I wonder if it was our first true adult couples friendship. In the end, I think the space is still so vivid in my mind because it marks for me a moment of choice. I chose vulnerability. I offered and asked for a gift and it happened.
Bravery in Friendship
00:05:28
Speaker
there and at all the tables that came after. Hmm. You paint the scene like so vividly where you're sitting the white table with the spindle legs. Like I can picture all of it and I can imagine the kids down the hall and there's something even as you described
00:05:52
Speaker
the two getting married and they're just five. It says something about what had already been built even in more casual ways between your families. I think the other thing I was struck by as you were telling it
00:06:10
Speaker
was I found myself surprised that in the midst of the work you were doing that you found another couple close to your age with children close to the ages of your children that wasn't, as you put it, in your food chain. I think I'm a little stunned. Such a gift, right? I mean, it felt like a needle in a haystack of all of the people
00:06:40
Speaker
There was one and thankfully there was one. Well, and as you mentioned, even as you say, a needle in the haystack, it just wasn't that long ago that you were walking me through your streets and Istanbul, not the streets, your streets. And the days that we were there, you and I both commented, it is so big and it is so loud and it is so filled.
00:07:04
Speaker
with people and hustle and bustle. And so then again, I'm like, wow, you found these people and they were even proximal enough to you that you could even think about building something with them.
Complexities of Adult Friendships
00:07:21
Speaker
I wonder Beth, what were the moments like after you put your heart out there, after you guys sort of made your ask
00:07:30
Speaker
What happened next? I think there was even another level of comfort we all sink into. A sense of all of those doubts and questions, do you want to spend this holiday with us? Do you want to do this thing? Those kind of went away. There became this safety of we both know we want that. And so I think that actually is what invited more of the depth
00:08:00
Speaker
the removal of all of the insecurity because despite having spent two years of getting along great, we hadn't breached that yet. It feels like sort of this cusp of we want you to be our people. Would you like us to be your people? That's why it feels like a DTR. It did. I love that. It's like, yes, that's exactly what's happening. That is exactly what's happening.
00:08:29
Speaker
I said brave and mature because I look back and I am so proud of that younger version of me that did that. I'm not quite sure I would necessarily do that today, but to be able to do that and know that that's actually what would be required to experience what we long to experience. And it did sustain us, that relationship with that family sustained us for the
00:08:58
Speaker
the remainder of our time there. It's what kept us as long as we were able to stay. Yeah. What do you think would make it hard to do that, have that same conversation today? That's a great question. I think there was such abandon in that context. We had already given up so much. Desperation felt very palpable. So it felt a little life and death-ish.
00:09:26
Speaker
Now things just all feel more complicated actually. They feel more layered. Our particular role in the city we live in right now feels messy, like just in terms of that food chain I described. I think I was accessing some of my current reality even in describing that because that feels very true as well today. And so I guess maybe I'm still looking for lateral friends that
00:09:55
Speaker
aren't in the food chain, aren't part of the wishable life that we live again, and just in another context. That's something that you and I share. I know all of our listeners don't share that reality, but if you lead in any context, but particularly in ministry contexts, wherever you are, part and parcel to that is the messiness that comes with how you then form lateral
00:10:24
Speaker
friendship that comes with a lot of freedom, I get that. I think it also, I hear the desperation and the clarity of the need. And as you describe feeling like you're being mature in that conversation, I feel a sense that there was still an innocence to building couple friendships that's probably still at play for you guys. As you say, this might've been our first couple friendships
00:10:54
Speaker
I think that comes with less baggage than maybe it does later on. Yeah. I'm thinking of words like there was a lot of hope and naivety. I think it felt risky at the time, but I don't think, and maybe that's what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure I would define risk in the same way today. Yeah. To do that again right now feels bigger than I think. I was aware of what risk was like back then.
00:11:19
Speaker
our awareness of the risk becomes greater when we've known the sting of loss, right? Which at this point we've both known. So I have to ask, I know you left where you were. You left Turkey. What happened after you left? Was that a friendship for a season or was it a friendship that has sort of stood or continued to have some contact over time?
Family Thanksgiving Traditions
00:11:45
Speaker
It went on for quite some time. There was
00:11:48
Speaker
kind of this reunion when they stayed much longer than we did. But when they would come back, they always came and saw us and stayed with us. And the kids were like cousins at that point. Sweet. I think if I'm honest, I held on to that little five-year-old marriage thinking one day it would turn into a real one.
00:12:10
Speaker
over time as they returned to the States and settled into life back in the States and the kids all just got older, that became more difficult. And there's a sadness in that for me, we would see each other now, but without the same level of intensity. Yeah. Yeah. How about you read yours now? All right.
00:12:32
Speaker
I believe the table is a magical place where so much becomes possible as people gather. Stories are told and memories are made, longings are stirred, belonging is cultivated, and often people leave filled with goodness and holding hope for the next gathering.
00:12:54
Speaker
I learned about the table from my mom. I have vivid memories of her pulling out the leaves to lengthen the table for holiday gatherings. She meticulously chose the tablecloth, the napkins, the dishes, the glassware. And she would set the table at least two days ahead of time, making slight adjustments as her vision for the meal unfolded and came to life.
00:13:18
Speaker
She would explain to me that the dishes on the table were a gift from her mom and the goblets belonged to Mammy, her grandmother. And each element came with a story that gave me a taste of the women I come from who died too early for me to ever really know them. I loved those dinners and the house filled with people in conversation, candlelight dancing off the crystal goblets as people lingered at the table.
00:13:43
Speaker
Our first dining room table came from the Pottery Barn outlet, an unexpected find on a Saturday afternoon outing. Missing legs and a small gouge at one end left it with a $125 price tag. Mark hunted through the stacks of random table legs in a corner of the store and found four that matched the table, which fully extended with seat 12 people.
00:14:08
Speaker
Telling the store manager about his role as a young adult pastor and how we serve dinner to 40 young adults every Monday night out of our home secured those legs at no extra cost.
00:14:19
Speaker
and we skipped Starbucks and date nights for the next month to help cover the unexpected cost of the table. Mark made an extension for that table. A piece of plywood cut the same width as the table was, fashioned to rest securely on top of what we called an old church table. The kind with the heavy Formica top and steel legs that folded out. If you pushed it up to the end of the dining room table, we could easily seat 20. And if we squeezed in tight, 22.
00:14:47
Speaker
Week after week, that makeshift extra long table was stretched out in our dining room with kids circled up eating roasted chicken and mashed potatoes or homemade lasagna as they talked about their lives and conversed about God and whatever they had learned that week in their small group. Our dining room in Michigan was lovely, but smaller than our San Antonio house. The plywood and church table were stored in the basement, unnecessary for the life we established there until one Thanksgiving.
00:15:17
Speaker
when our home was going to be filled with family and friends. It had been a particularly difficult year as we continued to navigate painful circumstances in the ministry I was leading at the time. Additionally, my mom had had a stroke and then my dad had unexpected open heart surgery the week before Thanksgiving. Waiting in the Phoenix airport, I allowed myself to exhale, releasing some of the fear and concern I had been caring about my parents.
00:15:45
Speaker
I boarded the plane to Grand Rapids with my son, Steven, coming home from Grand Canyon University for the holiday. He was full of hope for the week and for seeing all of our people.
00:15:57
Speaker
Sitting side by side, he began to ask me about the food plan. He is the keeper of our family traditions. He reminds us all of the food, the decor, the music, the order in which it all rolls out every year. His tending helped me continue to transition from the space of concern and watchfulness over my mom and dad to the space of welcoming the holidays.
00:16:19
Speaker
Thanksgiving Eve as the girls and I worked on cinnamon rolls and pumpkin and apple pies and continued to check the 25 pound turkey thawing in a giant ice chest. Mark and Steve hauled the plywood and the church table up from the basement. They moved the furniture transforming the dining room into the TV room, ready for the Macy's parade and football games. And the living room became a grand dining room with the extended table stretching out, waiting to be prepared.
00:16:47
Speaker
That year, I watched my kids, all five of them, 10 years old to 27 year old, set the table. They pulled out the table claws and the napkins from my great grandmother, the gold salt and pepper shaker from my grandparents 50th anniversary. The red goblets from my mom and the two sets of China needed to set the places for the friends who were coming. Candles, pumpkins, fall leaves and colorful gourds were arranged down the center.
00:17:15
Speaker
Libby brought down all her markers and folded index cards in half to make place cards. Choosing colors that matched her feelings for each guest, she wrote their names in her best handwriting, adding swirlies and little flowers in the corners. Allison and Steve worked through creating the seating plan, thinking carefully about who should be near who, talking with one another about each guest and what they felt would create the best setting for good conversation for everyone.
00:17:43
Speaker
And Katie carefully reminded Ellie that the forks go on the left and the spoon goes outside the knife on the right. The legacy passed from my great-grandmother to my grandmother, to my mom and to me, unfolded at my table. Thanksgiving Day, our friends arrived in a scene that felt like it belonged in a holiday movie, bundled up in coats and scarves, their contributions to the meal and colorful insulated totes, the kind I didn't know existed until we moved to the Midwest.
00:18:14
Speaker
Each time we opened the door, a burst of cold air and a few windswept fall leaves rushed in with them. At 4 p.m., we circled around the table and prayed. I couldn't help but keep my eyes open, soaking in the scene, the mingling of the past and the present and all that was being held inside the circle of friends gathered together to give thanks. You've got me laughing and crying.
00:18:43
Speaker
I wonder, I'm so curious about your tenderness in those two places and I feel that they're different. Honestly, it has been a while since I found myself in the fall feeling thoughtful and connected.
00:19:01
Speaker
to all of the goodness that that time in Michigan held for us alongside what was hard. The hard has felt more palpable, I think, and something about this year, I don't know what it is, but there's something that's just created more space for those memories to sit.
00:19:21
Speaker
a little differently inside of me. So as I was writing that piece, I felt very connected to that house, to all that the house held. So I think that's part of it. I think the other part at this point, my mom with her dementia and just how it's unfolding, I mean, she still knows us, all of that. We haven't crossed a threshold there, but the idea of like,
00:19:48
Speaker
lengthening her table and pulling out her tablecloths and setting it, that would overwhelm her today. It would be more than she could do. And so I think there's a tenderness that I feel as I'm standing between my mom and who she was and how she did that and who she is today. And then that space where my kids are now, I have grown adult children that are ready to
00:20:19
Speaker
pick that up, you know, and carry that. And I think that year, between 10 and 27, is like the little girls were still little. And it wasn't my mom at the table or even me explaining to them, you know, it was their siblings, like, this is how we do this. These are the tablecloths we use. This is why. At their own table. Yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
There's such a beautiful theme of legacy in that. And I think just knowing that your mom will not set a table like that again, but it's already beyond your generation. It's already in their hands. That gift of all that she taught you around the table has already been carried out. Yeah, very much.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I can picture the faces that were there that year, the friends that came. And at that point, you know, the friends that were there and still coming to the table were super aware of all.
00:21:29
Speaker
They're the friends that stayed and the friends that were willing to hold. Yeah.
Significance of Family Gatherings
00:21:36
Speaker
Knowing your Michigan story and your tenderness in that moment, wondering if that was at the end of that
00:21:44
Speaker
difficult season. It was made for a magazine, I mean, just in all of the ways. And I just heard the delight in, you know, each of the roles the kids played in bringing forth that kind of, it just seemed like collective relief. I mean, that's our last, yeah, that was the last Thanksgiving. It felt really powerful. Yeah, that feels really true that there is something about when we're all together.
00:22:14
Speaker
what dissipates. I know that's true for you guys too. When you guys are all together, there are things that dissipate. It's such a gift, isn't it? It's not something I take for granted and I know you don't. To feel connected to our growing adult kids and to feel that level of support and enjoyment of one another is a really
00:22:44
Speaker
they now have become the friends at the table. I think that's part of what the table is meant to hold. I think that idea that, you know, when we're gathered together, things can dissipate. Goodness can be held and the hard is somehow dissipated by the collective holding.
Transforming Red Tent Dinners
00:23:03
Speaker
I found myself thinking about even in scripture where we know that Jesus won't take of the cup. He won't sit at that table. He won't do those things again until he does them with us. And that feels a little bit to me like something will dissipate at that point. I think we're meant to carry that on.
00:23:24
Speaker
and our families. And I think that we're meant to carry that on as women, even with one another. So much beauty happens around those tables when we're willing to enter into the hard and the good with one another. I think that's what I love so much about the red tent dinners and the invitation to gather women, whether you know them actually very well or not.
00:23:53
Speaker
to invite them, just like I did with those friends, I'm inviting you to something a little bit more. And it's an intentional invite to sit at this table and allow everything out there to dissipate for a little while, because we know that powerful spaces.
00:24:12
Speaker
It feels like a great opportunity for us to just briefly talk about the space of the red tent dinner table. And you have really been helping to lead an effort to spruce that table up a little bit, maybe refresh it some. What would you like to share maybe just a little bit, Beth, about what women who are
00:24:34
Speaker
connected to us and wanting more connection with us and with one another could expect in the space of the red tent dinner. Well, it's been such a collaborative effort to have some women who love the table already give input and leadership into creating. I want to say like an easy to implement plan for hosting an evening like this and
00:25:00
Speaker
You know, for years there have been prompts available to download, but we've kind of taken the monthly themes and created like an entire live version that anyone could host in their home. And I was laughing as you described your kids because Libby, for example, is the one who is designing this template of sorts and making it beautiful, just like she did, you know, when she color coded the
00:25:27
Speaker
name cards for your table. And Alison is intentionally considering how to make that table beautiful. She's thinking about the experience one will have. She's offered different examples of here's how to fold a napkin, or look how to arrange flowers based on the season and your budget. Or we have Lindsay Ribble, who plans events professionally, who is offering wonderful cocktails.
00:25:56
Speaker
and dinner menu plans. And so we're trying to pull together just a way to, no matter where you feel like you are as a hostess, here's an easy way to set a table in a very inviting and welcoming way. And then here's some questions that start pretty benign. And I think what you'll find, what women will find quite quickly is that
00:26:22
Speaker
Just by those intentional questions, setting the stage of we're here to talk about stories, I think the discovery will be so surprising and delightful that those stories end up yielding some pretty vulnerable, connected places.
00:26:40
Speaker
So we're really excited to start putting those out there, all of which will be available on the Red Tent Libby website.
Legacy of Red Tent Living
00:26:49
Speaker
I'm excited too. And I hadn't actually thought about the part that Allison and Libby play in that realm until you started talking about it. It made me laugh. I'm sure there'll be some swirlies and possibly some flowers.
00:27:06
Speaker
This has been delightful, as always. As always. Love, love sharing stories with you. Same.
00:27:14
Speaker
found myself feeling tearful as I listened to my conversation with Beth, which we recorded a few weeks ago. One of the things that I loved from Beth's story and that I'll be taking with me was when she talked about realizing that they'd have to actually speak aloud their desire with this other couple. And she talked about the vulnerability in choosing that.
00:27:42
Speaker
and that the fruit of it was the safety of knowing that they then had that these were their people knowing that holidays and birthdays that they could confidently expect that those would be things that they would all want to share. We all need that. We need that kind of clarity in our relationships and in our friendships.
00:28:07
Speaker
And as I think about what I shared as I wrap up with y'all at the end here of the podcast, Beth named the legacy that she heard in my story, the legacy handed down from my great-grandmother to my grandmother, to my mother, to me, and then on to my kids. And the legacy of the table is woven into the fabric of who I am and
00:28:32
Speaker
And it's woven into the fabric of red tent living. It's how this all began was because one time I invited some women to come sit at that dining room table with the gouge in one end of it and the four legs that Mark found. And I really do believe that when we gather together and we hold the hard and the good with one another, things can dissipate. And that from there, we have a legacy of love to pass on.
00:28:59
Speaker
I don't know what your table is going to look like this week, whether you'll be filling the one in your home or maybe you're going to someone else's, or it may even be that you're sitting at a table that feels like it's lacking faces that you wish were there. Whatever it is, I want to invite you to take into this week the possibility of legacy for you. What would it be like to believe that you could
00:29:26
Speaker
Join us, join other women at Red Tent Living and begin to build a legacy around your own table. That would be my hope for you. Thanks again for joining us for this first season and we look forward to seeing you again and welcoming you into season two after the first of the year.
00:29:47
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by Katie Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson and our guests are all part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Love to you, dear ones.