Faith and friendship

She carefully peels and dices the eggplant, then places it all into the colander, gently tossing it with a generous amount of salt. "Just let it sit for a while," she says, "and the salt will draw out that bitter liquid."

Is this what faith does for us? Helping to draw out of us the bitter, the bile that can build up in our very flesh, causing our hearts to turn to stone?

This seems to be true of friendship, too.

In fact, faith and friendship seem to share several qualities...

...both require action on the part of all parties involved

...both add fullness and joy, peace to life

...neither is totally under our own control

...they can both be as comforting as they are challenging - sometimes easing life; sometimes asking for tough choices, and requiring the examination of anything but easy answers

One of my oldest and dearest friends visited me this past weekend. We talked and talked. We cried a little. We hiked. We laughed and ate. We shared as much as we could in 3 days time.

How is it that we are so close, but only lived in the same town for about a year, and that at the very beginning of our friendship. How has this thing grown and matured over a decade and more?

Work.

Faithfulness.

A gift from God.

I miss her already. She helped draw out some of my bitterness and I feel better than I did before her visit.

She helps my faith grow.

She points me to God.

She loves me, and I love her.

Miss you, friend...

Stuck like glue

Today is our 25th anniversary ... of our first date.

This date marks the beginning of our love. From this date twenty-five years ago, we haven't spent a day apart in our hearts. All through the end of high school, all through college we never did the break-up/get back together thing. We were always together.

Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century.

We were so young! And all we knew was that we really like each other. But that liking soon, so soon, matured into love, and much too soon for my parents' comfort, it was declared real love, life-long love.

How could our young hearts have known what we wanted for our future? I've never had a very good answer to that.

But it has stuck.

Not perfectly and without conflict. Not without perennial issues that every time they raise their heads we think, "This again?" Not without long-term, nagging struggles that seem foolishly unresolved. Not without struggles, pain, and some heartbreaking stuff.

But with love.

With joy.

With tons of fun.

And I am so thankful.

I'm still in love. And so is he.

Choice

I want to write a post that is filled with joy and fun! I want a day that is marvelous with no sadness. I want to not miss Dad every day.

But I don't want to be fake.

It's not like I'm sitting around constantly fighting back tears. And I certainly am still enjoying plenty of things - laughing out loud, even! And I'm even planning fun - one of my very best friends is visiting me, and I've got tickets in hand for two Rockies games.

But this grief thing just drags on and on. I know this is perfectly natural. I know I will work through it on my own time, and that I don't have too much control over how long that takes. After all, it hasn't even been a year yet.

This Sunday I hope to get away to the mountains by myself with a good book, my journal, some music, and maybe The Good Book. I want to read some Psalms, spend some time journaling, telling God what's going on in my heart, give Him all that's on my heart and allow Him to work it out like pulling taffy. Not disappear the sadness like a good fairy with a magic wand, but rather take this bone-deep sorrow, these tears, and heal them, transform them into something that will make me stronger, more tender, more filled with grace toward others, more reliant on Him, and more easily turned toward joy.

I love this God who loves me. I love His heart for me. I love that He wants to fill my life with joy. And I reach out my hands and say, "Yes! Lay it on me!"

I'll take that portion of joy, eat it up, and allow it to balance the sadness of missing Dad.

I can choose how I live my life. I will endeavor to choose joy.

The big sort

Today Becky and I tackled cleaning out a bunch of Dad's stuff. Yuck. What a horrible job. We did it, though! And we gave each other a high five at the end of our day. And ate Indian food. Comforting. :-)

Dad's office...what can I say? We found several things that made us shake our heads. "Oh, Dad, what were you thinking?"

And we found other things that made us laugh out loud. Like the piles and piles of paper.

Yep. Paper.

Notebooks. Looseleaf. 3x5 cards. Printing paper. Manilla folders. Hanging files. Fancy resume paper. Christmas stationary. Hotel notepads. Sticky notes.

If there had been some sort of disaster (like Y2K) - he'd have been all stocked up.

And we cleaned out the last of his clothes. Oh, those seersucker shirts that he loved! And as we folded and sorted, it became rather obvious that his favorite kind of shirt was plaid. Blue, green, yellow, red. Didn't seem to matter.

Dad.

Becky said sometimes it feels like he's just on another trip.

I wish I sometimes felt that way. Like he'll be coming back in another month.

My dad. Sure did love him. Sure do.

Cotton

In the whipping Texas wind, I stoop to pull balls of cotton from last year's old stalks. The fields are red in the spring sun, and are littered with loose cotton that wasn't scooped up at harvest. The soft clumps have blown and gathered into piles along the side of the fields, ready to be plowed back into the soil in the spring.

My mind goes to a story I once read of slaves picking cotton, the rough boles tearing their skin, the pace forced by the overseers not allowing for care or caution. I think about this as I fill my little bag. In my life, most choices are mine to make - about almost everything. To live as a slave? I can't begin to imagine it.

This cotton plant is such a picture of life. As I sit to write today, my mind is filled with so many different stories from the last two weeks that could spill onto the page - my sister's beautiful wedding, Tim and my fun trip down through New Mexico and across west Texas, the joy of coming home, the wonderful time with sisters ... but the fun week ending with news of the death of an amazing woman, a long-time family friend whose suffering had gone on for 50 years.

Good and bad, soft and iron-hard, the tender and the tearing. Life's journey. I cling to the knowledge that life has as much joy as it does sorrow, even though the sorrow sometimes seems to surround us like a fog. If I will keep my eyes raised up, if I will look to the sky, the sunshine will pierce through those clouds and illuminate my days. I don't walk in darkness.

Last week Melissa walked down the aisle in the fading light of a spring evening, aglow in her beautiful dress, she and Matt holding hands before he gave her into Jason's care. Their flower girls? Two of the cutest little twins ever seen in their tulle dresses banded with yellow ribbon, wandering through the crowd like ladybugs in a garden, flitting here and there.

And Marly? She was given a hard life to live, fraught with illness and pain. But she lived that life striving to smile, to speak of God's provision and love, to be brave and weak at the same time. Now her suffering is over, and in my mind's eye I see her with my mom and dad, with Tim's grandma, my friend Kittie - all these people I've loved now in the bright light of heaven, free and filled with rejoicing.

A bole of cotton, tough and hard, able to tear and wound, but filled with something so soft and lovely.