I am in the middle edge of some relational issues and this original blog-topic, beautiful antique love story, is difficult at the moment.
Is that bad blogging? Do we soldier on and credit it to fuel and fodder? Or do we take a moment, try to process, and come back?

I think I must just leave this rain check on the board. Better luck Sunday night all my readers.

Your love is all I need.

Your love surrounds me, Your love astounds me,

Your love is everything!

I run to You when my heart is weak, I cling to You, You are all I seek!

It’s my heart’s desire to be close to You, here in Your arms I’ll find my strength.

You’re everything I want, everything I hope in; You’re everything my heart cries out for!

~~~ Kari Jobe

“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and mighty windstorm hit the mountain. …but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood…” 

- 1Kings 19:11-13

__________________________

I am not sure agape is the wordfor it; I think its motives are a little more self-centered than that. Friendship is a title we commonly use for this love, a special kind of friendship. This isn’t just sharing comic-strip jokes about the boss over cubicle walls, or swapping coffee and play-dates for “adult” time among the children. This isn’t the kind of friendship that brings toasty, stale nostalgia with its family picture Christmas card. This is a deep and abiding love for a close-knit weave between goals, dreams, past and present that we want to share and continue sharing.

This love is between chocolate and new shoes; it can be shared in moments of sparkling potential, or when sitting on the damp bottom of the barrel. C.S. Lewis called it intimacy of souls without the distractions of “eros” (passionate love), two looking forward together instead of blindly at each other (if you will pardon my clumsy paraphrase of The Four Loves). I think that captures it most beautifully, two looking ahead together; this would imply that the two would also walk and grow together as only these sort of friends can. Maybe the term we use most is best friends, so that is what I  will keep to.

Best friends are like Godiva dark chocolate truffles;I can’t have just one. They are each uniquely exquisite, in humor, preference of cheese, attitude, driving styles, and beliefs. Each remind me of the different parts of my personality, parts that only they can bring out – Lewis’ insight again – and I would not change that for the world and a bag of new purses! The bonds my best friends and I have made over our bags of chocolate and 3 AM work-outs are permanent, the encouraging and sometimes jarring words of advice and raw honesty are indelible.

So, what happens when best friends are silently hurting ?I am not referring to the crush on someone who used them and they refused to see it, nor am I talking about the fight they just had with their parents or sibling for the umpteenth time about their temp-job or career choice. I am talking about a deep hurt, valleys of scars, oceans of tears that just cannot give the agony meaning any longer. What do best friends do when their “kindred spirits” are stuck? Maybe they are in that painful situation not by their own choice, but simply had it happen tothem? Maybe it wasn’t their fault? Yet they feel afraid and embarrassed to say anything, maybe because they have dealt with it for so long they don’t know any other way to be but to live two lives, have two faces, answer to two different names. What can friends do for friends who are hurting like that?

I can only speak as one who wants to be a best friend. Best friends feel when the other is hurting; it painsthem to see the other in such a way; so much hurt that it looks like there should be entrails and bodily fluid all over the place. Best friends don’t back down when they know that their other is teetering between continuing a life-squelching cycle and a small step toward change. The other may not want to see it, may not want to face it because they have been slogging around in the putrid mess they didn’t create for so long that they are afraid to try; it’s so bad now, but maybe silence will keep it from getting worse again.

Silence almost took a best friend from me. I didn’t know how to help, I didn’t get in and stay in contact, I didn’t push, couldn’t say how scared, confused, burdened, and devastated I was for them. So, I just didn’t. I just hoped and skirted around the issue just like my friend asked me to. Yeah, they asked me not to say anything to anyone or make a fuss because it would, all together now, “just make it worse”. For a long time, I didn’t, but it got worse on its own. Best friends don’t keep quiet; they cry out when the other can’t.

Can I tell you what you can do to me, if I tell on your pain? If I may, I would like to speak for the best friends who just might still be a little nervous about confronting you for fear of causing you more pain; yes, you the verbally abused cousin, you the abandoned spouse, you the beaten daughter, you the raped child. We want to help! Please, dear ones, let us?

We love you. Beyond ourselves, our plans, our ambitions, our own “problems”, we love you. There is no joy for us in pursuing a future or living daily hum-drum stuff if we know that you are in such pain. So, we are telling on your agony, exposing the lies that have kept you cowering.

When we tell the right people, authorities, counselors, wise men and women around you who love you too, you can take it out on us. It hurts to have the secrets uncovered – keeping an infection masked seems to prevent it spreading, for a time – it hurts to dig it out and deal instead of coping and shutting out.

              So, take it out on us. If you need someone to be mad at, be angry at us. If you need someone to blame your frustrations on while you are tossing and turning in a safe-house, blame us.

              We are not quitting on you. Love is patient, kind, keeps no score of good or bad choices, it doesn’t shut out, it pushes toward hope when you want to quit. It isn’t afraid to be vulnerable and it will always lift you to God and seek to protect you, no matter how many names you call it.

If you are reading this, please just think about us. Remember we are there next to you, and we are more willing to help than you might think, and we might not flip out as bad as you might guess. We don’t want you hurting without sharing. Just like the last bowl of triple chocolate-chunk ice-cream, or your favorite line-dry shirt outside under a fist of rainclouds you don’t leave best friends to be frozen or stretched out of shape and beyond recognition. Please, talk to us. We are right here. We love  you!

 www.mercyministries.org   www.actabuse.com    www.thehopeline.com    www.ndvh.org    www.safehorizon.org/page.php?page=sheltertour

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The story began in a small town in western Missouri, just outside of Kansas City in the early 1930s. Loretta had decided to return to school after working full-time and at home with her family to further her job opportunites. A slender brunette with striking blue eyes and captivating smile and manner, the twenty-five year old beauty arrived at business college in the same state eager to learn. Although the classes were challenging and the age difference between her and her fellow students was at times baffling, she pushed ahead to reach her goal. She was often comforted by the presence of her younger sister, Marybell, who had recently married and lived close to the campus.  Sisters always seem to have an interesting part to play in romance, no matter what century. Like the quietly scheming aunts and neighboring ladies of the house in classic romances of Jane Austen, this particular newlywed had an intriguing connection for her sister.

Marybell invited Loretta up for a weekend retreat towards the end of her first year of study. She and her husband Bob promised a wonderful weekend of rest, music – which Loretta had a natural gift and passion for – and enjoyment. What they did not tell her was that they had also invited a young man to drop in at the same time. Not long after arriving, unsuspecting Loretta was informed that her devious sister and brother-in-law had invited a young man named Bill over for dinner and that he would be accompanying them to the concert – he was a great singing talent as well.

I have to stop my monologue here (sorry for the sticky details) and give you the reaction of my grandmother in her own words; they are too precious.

Loretta: When I saw him walk through that door I was struck! Well, I thought, he is just the cutest thing I have ever seen! (her hands fly to her cheeks as she laughs). He was so good looking, funny, and charming, and tall! Oh, honey, I was so taken with him! I know that God looks at the heart of a man and so should we, but when you are a tall woman, it really does matter that he’s taller than you(“amens” from my side of the table); it’s just easier to look at him as the head of the house when you have to look up!

So they had dinner, went to the concert with her family, and then went to more dinners, and wrote letters, and took walks, and decided they were “quite taken with each other.” Bill was studying osteopathy at the time and Loretta was finishing her business associates, so they began moving into a more serious stage of their relationship. They were both mature adults in their mid twenties, secure in their faith and desires for raising a family and taking part in their communities, their hearts and minds moving in the same direction. Their courtship was mostly long-distance, through letters, telegrams and phone conversations, a far cry from our current , moment-by-moment contact and constant frantic monitoring of each other’s emotional progress. (It seems now that unless someone knows each meal their love-interest has eaten, how they slept, and an exact play-by-play of their routine – all given in real-time “txt” – and are “Facebook official” they are not considered to be involved in a relationship!) Marriage seemed to be just around the corner, but then the Japanese sent the U.S. army an invitation they could not refuse, and they in turn “requested” Bill’s presence at the engagement overseas.

 It was heart-wrenching, she said, to have to see him go not knowing what might happen to their wedding plans. But country and duty had to be obeyed, so she said goodby and he put on the uniform and boarded the train to boot-camp. She worked as a secretary for the agonizing three months they had to wait to find out his assigned station. When the news arrived (forgive me, I do not know the exact location) they did not have much time to plan or lament; the orders came and he was writing his first letter home from the transport in about a week. Every day, she told me gazing as if trying to see the very beeches he fought on, she would go to work and think about what encouraging news she could write or funny things to tell him in her letters enclosed in the care packages she and thousands of others sent regularly to their loved ones.

I have seen the letters she sent, tucked inside foreign-marked and stained letters of reply, each with its matching answer. They are a fragile yellow, and the spidery handwriting is faded from handling and revisiting the sweet sentiments, earnest hopes, and fervent prayers. I sat with her one afternoon as we talked about their time apart in those intense years of political and social difficulty during the war. She was calm as she recalled waiting anxiously for the next letter or telegram listing his last location, or answering her questions about his health or friends, or yet another assignment delaying his return home. She let me look at the addresses and strange postage markings, but would not let me read all of the contents; some things, she smiled, are just not for anyone to read.

Since this is being written among the frantic exams, furious term papers and phantasmagorical reading lists, I don’t feel it fair to promise that I will supply daily posts – I am still, after all a starving, hysterically stressed and poorrather taxed college student.  So, I will attempt to be as consistent as I can in my impoverished busy state and submit one new installment each week, probably on Fridays – or possibly Saturday, sometime, or even on some late Sunday evenings.  If you still doubt me, I will note it on the Manuscript of Ever Changing Facial Expressions (FB), so that I am held accountable and not leave my readers hanging!

_ _ _

I sat on edge of the faded blue armchair, just to the left of the squeaky spring, looking over jovial faces of a young couple, their two round babies and various scrawny pets. The smiles, once radiant, leaned out sweetly from yellowed pages in a captive moment. Loretta touched her glasses and smiled down on them, waving a soft hand lovingly over the pages, “This was in our first home on Magnolia.” Her smile reflected the one in black and white, only deepened by decades of use. “Look how skinny I was there, and Daddy too!” she laughed and we shook our heads over shared patterns of the feminine physique and its uncontrollable predictability. The laughter faded and she looked steadily at a tall, lank figure in army uniform. “My, but he was a fine man,” she said softly, and brushed a fresh tear from her cheek. “All my life, my ninety-one years, I have never met a man like him! I prayed and prayed when I was young for a good man, a hard-working, loving, Christian man, like my own father. And I waited, whooee!” she warbled, laying her head back, laughing and rocking in her tilt-back chair. “I waited a long time! So long I thought that I must have missed him! But then God brought my Bill, and he was everything I could have hoped for.” Loretta fingered her engagement ring, now worn thin with more than half a century of cleaning, cooking, and service. She sighed, and smiling, told me that they would have celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary in a few weeks, had he lived.

I had to sit back to take in the presence of the emotion that hung around her. There she was, 91 years old and as full of love and devotion for this man as if they had jus returned from their honeymoon. It was incredible to see such warmth and gratitude for a covenant relationship that lasted a short 18 years, and to experience the steel of their committment all these years later. I was humbled by her respect and reverence to an institution we presently seem to shrug off at an alarming rate as “old-fashioned.”  Perhaps it was this “old-fashioned” attitude that kept this beautiful, capable woman, my grandmother, in love with one man for 47 years after his death. Where can I find passionate committment like that today?

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

We, stumble in our power suits and heels, strengthened by our bent and crooked reflection, driven by our cold and leaky bank accounts, esteemed by our knowledge of the shallow and perishable. 

Stillness, in rush & hurried mess, we try to catch the card mansion as it falls; doesn’t He care?!  Why so silent when we’re crumbling?! Why not snap and poof, we’re back on top, pushing, scrambling, screaming, lying, hurting, running, anxious hiding who, what, we are not?

Dusty with rubble, we sit, knees in our hands, dazed from crying, still at last.

Hello, He is there.  Too ashamed to say sorry or help, we sink into the dust.

Want out?  I know the way.

     my legs are broken.

I’ll carry you.

     i’m dirty.

Only if you stay down there.

     i don’t have words.

It’s ok, I have so much to tell you, just listen.

He whispers as He carries us through the mess and dust and grime.  His words soft, deep, rhythmic comfort as His heartbeat we hear, strong now through the silence, wrapped in His arms at rest, on the way home.

Is one slice better than the other?  One the top, the other bottom? Or is it reversed?  How does the bologna stay in the middle and provide the rich goodness of its flavor to both sides?  How does it bring unity to the whole of the sandwich without separating its components?

Ideas?  Identification?

I can’t really help it, or so my procrastinating side tries to tell me!  I’ve been on the far-side of hither and the underside of yon trying to help my friend of a dozen years put together the wedding of her dreams and get my summer school schedule together and paid for.

An amazing thing God did for me: He paid for half of my summer tuition!!  Isn’t it funny how we tend to plan our lives down to the minute, work and strain to the inth degree, throw in a prayer to “cover the bases” and then wonder why we end up imploding with our plans in tatters around our ears!  I planned to stay home, plan my friend’s wedding, find a summer job, work at church with VBS, and basically chill.  Then my grades came back; I needed to take summer classes to bump my GPA up to keep some scholarships.  All of a sudden, my overwhelming thought was: where in the world am I going to come up with 3Gs to pay for this? Where am I going to live? How am I going to eat? To top it all off, the bride was flipped out about their budget, the caterer was having problems communicating with her, the baker couldn’t get the cake to stay upright in the southern heat, the best man quit, and I was going through some emotional instability from a situation with another friend at home.  God!  What are You doing??

I was sitting at my kitchen table, the 2nd week of May. All of my bills spread out in front of me, my wedding notes and plans behind me on another counter, and my journal, Bible, and box of tissues on the floor.  I had run the numbers and they did not add up.  There was nothing I could do in the short amount of time before school started to scrape up a budget for living on my own for 2 1/2 months. 

I had to let go.  There was nothing left to do. I breathed a prayer of surrender to God, “if You want me to go to school, You will make a way; if You want me to stay, You will make a way.  Please, take over my plans, put me where You want me.”  And I dialed the university business office one more time to find out what I could do to pay for my summer classes. 

  Business office, how can I help you?

Yes Ma’am, I need to find out my down payment amount for June. – long pause.

  Before or after the scholarship?

Scholarship?

  Yes, that’s the state scholarship award that was just extended to summer, you qualified for half tuition.

(my mouth is open in a silent screech) Yes ma’am, when do you need the remaining balance? (star-struck and fumbling to get down numbers in my agenda)

Not until you start classes.

  (a month away and enough time to withdraw and form a working budget!) Ok ( trying to speak in a normal pitch) I’ll bring the check when I get there.  Thank you!!

I didn’t hear the phone click off on the other end, and I couldn’t see tiny amount I had scribbled on the pad in front of me; my head was buried in a mound of tissues, shoulders shaking with laughing sobs of joy, amazement, and gratitude. For half an hour, all I could get out was Tha.. and then I would cry and laugh until my eyes and cheeks hurt. When will I learn to submit my plans to God and trust Him to do what is best for me?  When will I learn that He CAN and will do exceedingly and abundantly above anything I could ever hope or dream?  

The rest is a beautiful blur of yellow sunshine, white dresses, and soft music.  The wedding fell into place, the bride was beyond happy, radiant with love and joy, and the cake was exquisite!  I’m sitting here writing from school, about to begin my first day of classes.  I have to say, I’m basking in the warmth of His love, amazed yet again!

We are capable of holding lots of love.  That sounds cheep, but here is what I mean.  Have you ever heard that phrase/philosophy “guys are like waffles and girls are like spaghetti?” It’s supposed to be some sort of attempt to explain how and why men and women think and act so differently.  I have to differ with this theory; it seems to limit rather than illuminate the possible workings of the minds between the sexes.  There are so many people, men and women alike, who have limited themselves to one kind of love, or one concept learned early on in our lives.  We set ourselves so firmly within the bounds of what love “should feel/be like” that we miss out on entirely new, deep, and fulfilling experiences of love.

We have to expand our understanding.  Before my various and sparse readers begin to get concerned as to what kind of love I could be referring to, let me clarify.  Love has many faces and levels, each of which has its own level of personal fulfillment.  I have 2 beautiful nephews who lavish me with hugs, kisses, giggles, and boogers when I visit them (yes, boogers!  they are little boys, what do you expect?!).  I also have a handful of close girl friends with whom I share all sorts of crazy girl emotions, cooking fiascoes, road trips, family pains, and late-night “therapy” sessions.  I have been fortunate to have several close friendships with guys as well, and we enjoy plenty of fun and noise (usually involving an action movie or an episode of “Psych”!) as well as intriguing and probing conversations.  When we are all together, things get crazy!  Popcorn and mini-marshmallows fly and we have actually received complaints from our neighbors that we were singing and laughing too loudly (shocker!) 

I have bonded with every one of them, deeply.  I cannot say that I feel more satisfied when I am with one group of friends or family than another; every one of those relationships is dear to me, unique, but connected as an integral part of me – like spaghetti.  One cannot take the place of the other, fulfilling that special place in me, in our lives together. 

The beauty of it is, God’s plan was for this interrelated need.  I see Him in our lives together, I hear Him tugging at me in our conversations, using his words, my struggles, her questions and our findings to draw us deeper into relationship with Him.  His love for us, His knowledge and beauty are over, underneath, inside of us, coming through His creations.  As the Psalms remind us, all creation shouts of His power and might; and we are His most wonderful creations!  He didn’t make us to compartmentalise our hearts and emotions, avoiding depth of comitment and understanding in different relationships. 

God’s love is bigger than our shallow definition!  There are so many more ways that we can experience His love in our lives.  In fact, I challenge you/me/us to open up to the love that He is trying to pour out right now, today, this moment!  Love is not limited by our dim understanding that is skewed by our sex-driven culture and society!  Open up to the love that is found in close friendships, children’s chubby hugs, the weathered hand and smile of a grandfather or grandmother, the tearful gratitude of a “less deserving/questionable” stranger. 

D.C. Talk said it!  “Love is a verb!”

Well, I guess I asked a big one.  I have been praying that God would teach me more about Him, what it is to love like Him, and walk with Him daily.  I asked Him to help me obey Him more, because obedience is better than sacrifice and all that good stuff.  I asked Him to help me say “yes” to what He asks of me.  O my. 

I expected little things.  I noticed little opportunities to say yes and obey Him, cleaning the kitchen when I didn’t have to, speaking soft words instead of harsh ones, making breakfast for my suite mates, etc.  The “yes moments” would come in bunches, sometimes at awkward moments in the day, sometimes spaced out more.  All in all, I could tell there were little opportunities for growth over the past few weeks.  I was feeling pretty good about recognising those moments for the most part.

I guess I was making more progress than I thought.  When non-athletes train for improvement, they begin at a preexisting level of ability, small work-loads that their muscles can handle and that will add shape and tone with use.  Gradually, they increase the work-load so that the muscles have to work harder by pushing past that level of endurance and strength.  It takes many repetitions at each level, and at each level, there is  a certain threshold of “discomfort” — but really, it’s just pain — that has to be crossed.  Apparently I had grown enough at my level of obedience.

I got in a routine.  I was done with my homework, I had washed up for the night, I had done my exercises and stretches, I had drunk my chi tea, wrapped up to read my devotions and listen to the cold wind howl outside my window.  I was definitely doneserving for the day.  My phone rang.  My friend could not find a wallet.   It was dropped outside. In the driveway.  Sometime between 6 and 9:30pm.  It was 11:08pm.  My friend has trouble walking and vision problems.  Could I come help?

My first reaction was not a “saved” one.  I wanted to tell my friend, sorry, I can’t, call the credit card companies and bank in the morning, I’m sure it’s out there, or some one has gotten it already, stop payments, do whatever you need to so I can get back under my covers!  Not quite a WWJD moment (oh tell me some one else remembers that??!!) 

But the voice in my head said, “will you say yes to me?”  So, I realized at that moment that I truly was in training, and that I had to cross that threshold; and it was painful in that windy driveway after an icy drive across town with no heat.  I could feel the burn of those spiritual “reps” with every square foot I covered in the pitch dark with a 2 & 1/2 watt flashlight searching for a thin, black wallet that I have trouble seeing in daylight among the personal belongings of a purse.  And I could see and feel the change when I knelt and prayed with my friend for peace and protection over all the belongings in that wallet. 

Driving away, I knew I had passed the threshold.  We didn’t find it that night (in another car the next morning with another friend) but that night wasn’t about a wallet.  It was an opportunity to press deeper, and to be involved in the unexpected ways of God.  This is a new level I’m on now, new, stronger reasons to say “yes” and follow His wishes.  I just have to remember, be prepared to receive what I ask for.  It’s like Kirk Franklin said, “I’m stronger now, I’m patient now, I’m thankful now; ’cause of all I’ve been through.”