Friends aren’t the ones who makes your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems. ~UNKNOWN
I really miss my friend. My friend was more like my soul tribe. I felt safe with her. She never stabbed me in the back. We could talk for hours about life, the books we read, movies and God. We shared our thoughts and reactions to what we’ve read. We laughed at those not so funny jokes. She lived two hours from me. It was a long drive.
One morning she called me and said, Girl, skip work today and come over. We’ll go for brunch.” So I called in a mental day. I drove over, picked her up and we drove to one of those family restaurant nearby. The hostess was nice and led us to a table. She brought us water and menu. I looked at the clock. It was 10:30 in the morning. I asked her if we could have some wine. She looked long, more like studying us and said, “Now?”
“Yes. Now. Too early?”
If eyes could kill… lol
“OK. How about some coffee then?”
She brought coffee and went back to the front keeping watch on us. My friend laughed and said, “I think she has a problem with us drinking wine before lunch.”
“Maybe we should have dressed a bit better.” More laughter. Well, I thought we were decent for a lazy day in a family restaurant.
The waiter came and we ordered wine. She brought a bottle. Whatever the hostess was thinking is not of our concern.
Despair, wrote James Houston, “is the fate of the desiring soul.” Or as Scripture says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12 NLT). How agonizing it can be to awaken desire, our aspirations! Despite my challenges im still the same person inside. I still have dreams and aspirations. Over the past year I have wrestled deeply with what it means to go on. I have thought of why am I still here. God has come to me again and again, insisting that I not give up the dream. I have complained to God that it feels crazy to dream anymore. What does it mean to live the rest of my life with my challenges without cure and without my closest friend? She always had a wise word to say, to encourage me.
I think of Lewis and Clark, those inseparable wilderness explorers, how we cannot think of one without the other. Lewis said of his companion, “I could neither hope, wish, nor expect from a union with any man on earth, more perfect support or further aid in the discharge of my mission, than that, which I am confident I shall derive from being associated with yourself.”
Life is an exploration to unknown and we need a friend to say, “You can do it.” I am not alone in this. Most of you will by this time have lost a parent, a spouse, even a child. Your hopes for your career have not workeqd out as planned. Your health has given way. Relationships have turned sour. How awful it feels to open our hearts to joy, only to have grief come in. They go together. We know that. What we don’t know is what to do with it, how to live in this world with desire so deep in us and disappointment lurking behind every corner. After all the injuries we’ve received in life, the resentment like arrows piercing our hearts, how dare we even dream? I do know one thing: if I stop aspiring or dreaming I’d kill my heart.
People have ceased to live because somewhere along the way their hearts was killed by despair.