Known: Finding Deep Friendships in a Shallow World - Softcover

Foth, Dick; Foth, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0735289751 ISBN 13: 9780735289758

Publisher: WaterBrook, 2017

Synopsis

In an often shallow and fast-paced world, how can we really know and be known by another person?  How do we make true friends?
 
The Digital Age is all about change, but the need for true friendship never changes.  You are designed for real engagement with others---for affirmation that goes beyond a simple “like” on social media, for connection over meals, for hope and excitement about the future. Above all, you need to be known and accepted for who you are. But how do you  find and maintain this kind of friendship in a fluid and frenetic culture?
 
In Known, Dick and Ruth Foth offer inspiration and proven practices to build relationships through personal storytelling and affirmation. They draw on years of mentoring, rich relationships, and the model of Jesus to show you why friendship is one of the keys to a full life and the greatest gift we can give to each other.

About this title

About the Author:

Dick Foth is an author, storyteller, and popular speaker. He holds a master’s degree from Wheaton College Graduate School and a doctorate from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. He and Ruth have invested the last twenty-five years working in the marketplace of business and government to encourage leaders in their personal lives.  Dick also serves on the teaching teams of four congregations, including the multisite National Community Church pastored by Mark Batterson in Washington, D. C. 

Ruth Foth has an English degree from Bethany College in California and she is a homemaker, gardener, and quilter. The Foths live in Colorado and have four children and many grandchildren.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Foreword
 
If you gave me a word association test and said, “Relationships,” my immediate response would be, “Dick Foth.” I’ve never met anyone who does relationships better! And I’ve been the beneficiary of that fact for two decades now. Of course, it takes two to tango. And one of the beautiful things about this book is that we don’t just get Dick’s viewpoint; we also get Ruth’s reflections! And trust me, when Ruth speaks you want to listen very closely, very carefully! There is a raw honesty and profound dimensionality to this book because it’s two-part harmony.
 
When I was a rookie pastor trying to find my way in ministry and in marriage, Dick Foth befriended me. Dick and Ruth invited Lora and me over to their home for our first Thanksgiving in Washington, DC. When Ruth served up a warm berry cobbler for dessert, I knew it was a friendship that needed to be cultivated!
 
Dick Foth has been a spiritual father to me for more than two decades now. He’s been a sounding board for difficult decisions. He’s offered encouraging words during tough times. And he’s not afraid to ask the tough questions! In fact, he rarely asks me how I’m doing. He usually asks me how my wife and children are doing! Dick knows that it’s our relationships with those who are closest to us that is the best barometer of how we’re doing personally!
 
Simply put, there isn’t anyone I’ve learned more from than Dick Foth. And you’re about to discover why I love and honor Dick and Ruth so much. This book is pure gold—gold that has been refined by seventy-five trips around the sun and fifty years of marriage. You’ll find a few theories in this book, but those theories are backed up by hard-earned, down-to-earth lessons about life, love, and catching tadpoles!
 
Dick and Ruth now live near Fort Collins, Colorado, but Dick graciously returns to Washington, DC, to speak at National Community Church several times a year. Every time I announce that he’s coming, our church gives him an ovation. For the record, they don’t clap for anyone else, including me! Our congregation is very young—about half are twentysomethings—and my theory is that Dick is the grandfather they always wish they had. You’ll feel the same way about Dick and Ruth just a few pages into this book.
 
Dick is one of my favorite communicators, one of the best communicators on the planet. He can tell a story like nobody’s business. But after listening to his preaching for more than twenty years now, I think I know his secret sauce. No matter what text he’s speaking on, no matter what context he’s speaking in, he has a reassuring message that comes through calm and clear: it’s going to be okay!
 
Dick and Ruth have weathered some storms, including the divorce of Dick’s parents. They’ve walked through their fair share of tough times as husband and wife, father and mother. And they’ve been good old-fashioned friends to so many people during Dick’s tenure as pastor, college president, and friend to some of the most powerful people in politics during their years in Washington, DC. But through thick and thin, despite all the ups and downs, they’re still standing. And not just standing, smiling!
 
The sad reality is that we live in a very shallow world, but if anyone can help you build deep friendships, it’s Dick and Ruth Foth. Whether it’s overcoming the aches and pains of loneliness or taking your friendships to a deeper place, you’ve come to the right place.
 
A book is a two-way street. The authors invite you into their lives, and you get to discover a whole new world. I think you’ll love Dick and Ruth’s world. But the reader also invites the authors into their world. I believe your life will be better because of it. I know mine has been forever imprinted, forever impacted.
—Mark Batterson
  
Introduction
 
What Really Matters
 
Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
—William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim
 
The question I asked the university student was casual.

“What’s a word that you’d use to describe your generation?”
 
He said, “Overwhelmed!”
  
I said, “What do you mean? What are you overwhelmed by?”
  
When I heard overwhelmed, I saw my parents—born in 1910 and 1913 respectively—who lived through World War I, the influenza epidemic of 1917–18, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II.
 
“Information,” he said. “My generation is overwhelmed by information.”
 
When he said information, two facts I had recently seen popped into my head: Children born in the 1990s belong to the first generation in the history of the world that
- do not have to go to an authority figure for information,1 and,
- will be able to access more new information that will be generated this year than in the previous five thousand years combined!2
 
“But you’re so connected to each other,” I continued.
 
He said, “Oh, yes! I’m connected to several dozen people through Facebook and Twitter. I just don’t know how to start a conversation.”
 
His words jarred me. For me, face-to-face conversation is the stuff of life. My thoughts zipped to Penn Station in New York City ten years earlier. Ruth and I were sitting in a hole-in- the-
wall Pizza Hut waiting for our train to Washington, DC. An older woman approached our table and asked if she could join us because seating was scarce. “Absolutely,” we said.
 
As we talked, she told us of graduating from a major midwestern university as a young woman and going to work for Hallmark in their creative department. She rose to the executive ranks in marketing, where she spent the rest of her career and from which she retired. When we asked, “What brought you to New York?” she said that she had been talked into coming out of retirement two years earlier to join the marketing department of a large New York company.
 
When I asked, “What’s the biggest difference in the workplace now for you?” she replied, “It bothers me when a young person sends me an e-mail on a subject, while sitting five feet away in the next cubicle.” “Why does that matter?” I asked. “It’s efficient.” She got quiet for a moment, then looked straight at us and said, “I miss the face-to-face, the eye contact. Eye contact makes us human.” I doubt that she had read the work of Atsushi Senju, a cognitive neuroscientist, who says, “A richer mode of communication is possible right after making What Really Matters 3 eye contact. It amplifies your ability to compute all the signals so you are able to read the other person’s brain.”3
 
The older woman wasn’t making a scientific statement. She was making a visceral statement. Just like my young university friend.
 
When the young man said, “Overwhelmed” and “I don’t know how to start a conversation,” it was a Penn Station echo. Intrigued, I listened. And he schooled me. He had good reason to feel overwhelmed. Come to think of it, I feel that way myself half the time. The Niagara of information we have access to can drown us. How we keep up, sort through, choose, and prioritize can paralyze us. Instant access has changed everything: education, sports, business, politics, and of course, shopping!
 
Still, nothing has changed more than the way we talk to each other.
 
Communication is the name of the game. Our brains are Exhibit One. A communication marvel, the brain automatically sends and receives millions of messages a day throughout our bodies. Person-to-person communication, on the other hand, takes intent. Every arena of life—business,
sports, medicine, education, the military, and families, to name a few—work only as well as we communicate. Why? Because great communication creates relationship, and relationship drives our whole lives.
 
At stake in this new reality, where we have keyboard control over what we wish others to know about us, is the depth of the relationships we want to build. We have all kinds of relationships, but apart from family, none is more meaningful than a friendship. Friendship, by definition, is unique. It’s about investment and vulnerability. So trying 4 Introduction to make a friend at light speed is brutal. On the Internet, I can give you information, but it’s hard to give you me. That process does not happen at the tap of a key.
 
How then do relationships get started? What nurtures them? When God says, “It is not good that man should be alone,” we know he’s not kidding. Because we know alone. How do we get beyond that reality? What do we need to understand to create any kind of connection, let alone a friendship?
 
Glance with us for a moment in the rearview mirror. How do kids make friends? When we are young, we develop friendships on the fly. Mostly, they come from play. When I was young, I lived to play. Looking back, play set the stage for my first friendship.
 
My parents moved from Oakland, California, to south India when I was three years old. The next five years framed how I see the world to this day. But the year we returned to the States framed how I see friendship. We came to Springfield, Missouri, in the summer of 1950. The Blue Mountains of southwest India were as different from the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri as curried chicken was from biscuits and gravy.
 
It was there that I got my first bike, a bright red Schwinn. That bike became my ticket to a world of Royal Crown Colas and Eskimo Pies saturated in Ozark accents and open-door hospitality. Those were good times. And John David made them better.
 
John David lived three doors up from us on Williams Street on the north edge of Springfield. Born within two months of each other in the spring of 1942, he and I had chemistry. Whatever that means, we had it. We were Marco Polos on bikes, racing through the nearby local zoo and county fairgrounds, ranging out, when time and parents allowed, to Doling Park and the James River.
 
We only lived in Springfield one year, but that year was filled with fishing and hiking and spelunking through caves. The days were riddled with BB gun wars, wrestling matches, and games of every kind. The greater the challenge meant the greater the fun.
 
When we explored Doling Park Lake that spring, we found the tepid water at the lake’s edge to be a perfect hatching site for tadpoles. Hundreds of tadpoles. Huge tadpoles. Tadpoles with oversized heads and sweeping tails. We became hunters. They became the hunted. Armed with Folgers coffee cans nailed to scrap-furring strips, we captured a bunch of those denizens of the shallows.
 
We took them back to the unfinished concrete basement of the Foth house and put them in a galvanized washtub. I don’t remember what we fed them or how many survived the trauma. All I remember is being amazed when tails fell off and legs grew. In a few weeks, on a humid June night, the full-throated baritone songs of their cousins back at the lake filled the darkness. And we knew that something wondrous had happened.
 
Looking back on that year, another wondrous thing had happened: I had made a friend. My very first real friend. A friend to talk to and play with. A friend to fight and dream with. A friend with whom I could morph and grow. A friend for the adventure called life.
 
We left Springfield for Oakland, California, in August of 1951. John David and I would connect every so often over the next decades, but it would be more than forty years before we lived near each other again. Then it would be in Washington, DC. By that time, John David Ashcroft had served twice as attorney general of Missouri, twice as governor, one term as senator, and—during
our years in DC—would become the seventy-ninth attorney general of the United States.
 
Relationships come and go. Some are for a season; others just for a moment. But some are for a lifetime. At this writing, John David and I have been friends for over sixty-five years!
 
That said, 1950 is gone forever. How people relate to each other today has been transformed. We live in a high-tech, digital world that promotes connections which often mimic relationship, but are far from what we actually yearn for when we look for meaningful community. Through our network and connections, we can have a feeling of being close without real touching. Dr. Sherry Turkle of MIT, in Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, puts it this way:
Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies. . . . Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other even as we are tethered to each other.4
 
Please understand. I love technology and social media. The ease that it offers in discovering the world is a playground for guys like me. To hear from our friends on Facebook or see our twelve grandkids’ grins on Skype is wonderful. But sometimes what we think is happening isn’t happening. Like an old North Carolinian friend of mine said so often, “What’s happenin’ ain’t what’s goin’ on!”
 
The world of technology and social media can present itself in an alluring way, but it often gives me more than I want and less than I need. It changes daily. Platforms and devices shift like the weather. It offers me a lot of things and takes me lots of places. Specifically, it takes me wide. Where it cannot easily take me is deep. So, where do I go to find deep?
 
There is built into each of us the need not just to connect but the need to engage. As we will see, we discover ourselves as we discover each other. We adapt to change, but we yearn for stability. We love to have wings, but we also need roots. Friendship can deliver both wings and roots.
 
You already know I’m an older guy. I like to think I won’t be officially old until I’m ninety. But, at this writing, I am on my seventy-fifth trip around the sun. So life has worked me over a bit. In the process, I’ve discovered that certain things make us human and certain things make life work. Old Archimedes, the greatest scientist of his day, spoke to that idea. Born in 287 BC, he described how levers work and gave us one of the most quotable lines in history: “Give me a place to stand, and I’ll move the earth.” It’s a physics principle and a great metaphor.
 
Where can you stand to get a solid footing in life? Where can you really be grounded?
 
Ruth and I have a bias: get relationships right and everything else follows. Our first seven years of life were spent in very different spaces geographically, but they had a common theme: relationship was king.
 
We were both born in California. I was an Oakland guy, and she was a San Joaquin Valley girl. I was city. She was farm. Then things changed. At the age of three, I left all extended family and sailed to India with my parents and sister. Ruth stayed in ranch and farming country north of Modesto surrounded...

About this edition

• Publisher: WaterBrook
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0735289751
• ISBN 13: 9780735289758
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224