Lost and found friendships are a sometimes sweet, and sometimes very bitter, part of moving to a new place. My comfort is that the Lord promises to never leave or forsake me. So here's my letter for the dear women I'm honored to call sisters. It feels like they live a long ways away today. I pray I can love you as I've been loved.
Hi,
I have been struggling to put this into words, but wanted to share with you how the Lord worked through you ladies, so here goes.
First, allow me to take a step back to this spring, when I found out we were moving. Typically, my friends and I would have slowly grown some distance between us - spacing, I suppose, to protect ourselves from pain of loss the inevitable change would bring. I fully expected this; after all, that had been my experience with friends who had moved away throughout my childhood, and as friends and I left college, and as friends had moved before.
Frankly, this slow separation reminds me of peeling a band-aid bit by bit, tearing each little skin cell and grabbing the hair caught up in it with tiny, sticky pinches. I'm one of those "grab it and rip it off" people, aiming to hurry the pain process up and get over it quickly. So why is it so natural to slowly separate from my friends as life takes us to different locations? I know it's not really intentional, but bit by bit, even before I'm my house is sold, I figured I'd know a little less of the day-to-day details of my friends.
I admit this was my biggest fear (and cause for tears, anger, frustration, etc.) regarding the move. I didn't want to leave my friends, true. However, I REALLY didn't want to be left out, slowly replaced by other people and other activities and other interesting parts of life, while I sat and watched and packed my stuff. Selfish, yes, but painfully real.
So, the decision to move (or rather, in my case, coping with the decision) was emotional. My attempt at denial - supposing that if I just kept going as normal, the separation (and gradual distancing in relationships) wouldn't happen - failed miserably. However (and why this wasn't my first reaction, well... you just have to know God is still working on my emotions!), it dawned on me that I should pray about the whole "dealing with it" situation. Further, I should really own the predictament, and ask others to pray as well.
And so, I did... or rather, we did. And this is what happened:
I got closer - deeper in friendship, more in sisterhood - with my friends. As I'm writing this, I still think it's a little wierd. One of the big, abundant, didn't-see-that-coming-and-wow-God-is-good type of surprises.
I mean, the first thing I did was admit that I planned to, and expected everyone else to, slowly separate from our friendships during the months before our move. I can only imagine how that must have sounded to my friends, "hey, I'm thinking that I won't really care as much about what's going on in your life, and I just want you to know that I'm not expecting you to care as much about me, either, since I'm moving and all this summer." What a very not-such-a-good-friend thing to say!!
Surprisingly, my friends agreed - that's just usually what happens. But when I asked for prayer that it not happen this time, everyone prayed. Sometimes, they prayed right then, right there. Other times, we prayed for it as we washed dishes or drove to the grocery store or did the other prayer-in-the-middle-of-life prayers that happen among my friends. And (surprise?) God listened - and answered - our prayers.
You came and visited with me and had me over and went places with me and we were friends who did stuff. We ate at new places and tried new things and had conversations that were hard. This may not sound much, but I realized as you came over that you may not ever have been in my home before (yikes - gotta fix that this time around!), and now here we were, talking and working and getting more and more in each others' lives. Friends started sharing their real, sometimes very hard, prayer needs. We started praying more with each other, more for each other, and my prayers for my friends got really specific. This is the type of thing you usually get as you get closer friendships - which, ironically, was what happened.
And then, maybe predictably, maybe not, things got really messy. Life so often does as you get more involved in people's lives. You start to find out the stuff that isn't at the surface in their lives, and they start to see the dirt (literally and figuratively) that is behind your fridge and toilet and other hidden places. You start to need each other more, because you know each other and you trust each other and God keeps knitting you together more and more as you trust Him to be your ultimate, never-move-away friend.
And that, my dears, is what happened to me. I learned so much about you and lived so much with you during the last months I was there, I can't really believe it was only a few short months that spanned all of those experiences. I am still in awe of the friendships and bonds that God put together during those weeks. I really didn't expect it. I expected God to help me cope with the separation. I hoped that He would comfort me as I watched myself slowly worked out of the group. I clung to the hope that maybe, one or two of you would keep in touch. I really didn't think that He would answer my prayers and make it (that whole yucky transition) not happen.
So, that brings me to this: thank you. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for what may have been a really hard goodbye (that quick and awful "rrrrrrriiiiiiiiippppppppp" of a band-aid at the very last moment). Thank you for making yourself and your life open to me, especially when open meant very vulnerable and "un-private." Thank you for teaching me what freindship can really look like. Thank you for raising the bar on what to expect, pray for, and cherish in relationships. Thank you for showing me that moving away doesn't have to mean moving on.
Most of all, thank you for increasing my faith. I had hoped for so little out of our great big God. I had thought He might do something small and relatively insignificant. I hoped He might help me be happy. How foolish, and how weak of faith! God is never small and never insignificant. You walked me into a greater love and appreciation for joy - not happiness, which flies with circumstance - but joy, peaceful beautiful joy in the midst of all circumstance. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I recently read this passage, one that has been a favorite for a long time, but now I find it has new depth:
"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen!" (Ephesians 3:14-32)
Love from Here,
1 comment:
Very sweet! :) Making friends certainly does take time. Also, let me assure you that you are the kind of friend that folks don't want to slip out of their lives.
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