Friends

I've been reflecting on friendship lately.  I can't think of one phase of my life that is not intimately bound with people I have called friends.  From the elementary school playground swinging on swings, playing red rover, always walking hand in hand with my buddies to just last week shedding shared tears over chai tea because being a person is hard but it's oh so much better with these extraordinary beings we call friends. I have been so blessed with different friends in different seasons of my life.  I wrote the content below years ago when I was going through a divorce and wanted to express what they meant to me. Some of them are still a large presence in my world and some not so much.  Regardless, I will be forever grateful for each and every one of them and the ones who continue to ride beside me no matter the consequence. 

 

Throughout this journey (today it feels like a journey) I have run the gamut of thought and emotion like the wildest roller coaster ride ever.   I have learned a great deal about myself and about the people around me on this ride.  One of the very profound experiences I have had is that of the people in my life who have gotten on the roller coaster with me. 

They didn’t have to.  I’m sure there were many times when they didn’t want to, but they did it anyway. 

Most of the time these outstanding individuals knew what they were allowing themselves to experience and it was light years away from being pleasant and pretty.  We’ve stepped off that roller coaster together, disheveled, queasy, and exhausted, with just mere minutes to recover before boarding again for another go ‘round.   These are the heroes of my life.  These are the folks who put on battle gear and walked through fires with me.  I know they didn’t always know what to do to make it better for me, and really in almost every way, they couldn’t. 

Nevertheless they were there. 

Beautifully and amazingly, there.

 I remember the day when I called one of these heroes because I knew that I needed to cry and I could not get myself to do it.  I needed her kindness and love to help me feel safe enough to let it all out.  I know as she listened to me sobbing, her own heart was breaking, but she stayed there for me and experienced that pain with me.  The ability and willingness to do that for a fellow human being is nothing short of miraculous. 

There are still times when I hold on for dear life and pray for it all to be over, but more often these days, I see the quick turn or the steep hill coming and lean into it so it doesn’t completely knock me off my seat.  Even on the occasion where I don’t see it coming I am better equipped to recover more quickly.  It helps that there is always someone present to hold me steady.  I don’t want to be on this ride.  It’s not what I signed up for when I walked into the park.  Nevertheless, here I am, but I am never alone.  First and foremost I have my God.  The One who will never leave me.  The Rock I build my life on.  Then I have those who put their own lives on hold to pick me up, brush off the dust, and gently hold my aching soul.  There are no words to properly express the gratitude and admiration I feel for these amazing gifts I have been given.   There is a true perfection that comes from the unselfish act of reaching out a hand to one who so desperately needs that touch.  I hope and pray that moving forward I can take what I have learned and jump on roller coasters and hold folks steady and give back the amazing love I have been shown.  I guess I believe that’s kind of what we’re here for.

  I close my eyes, I nod my head, and I say a heartfelt thank you to my heroes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


First Post Ever!

Welcome to my first blog post!

I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember.  Mrs. Webster, my first-grade teacher, had each of her students make a book as a project.  I say make a book, not just write a story, because in the crafty way we did things back then, we actually hand made a book.  There were wall paper remnants, cardboard, glue, and if memory serves, a needle and thread involved in the creation of this book.  The story itself was hand written on cream colored construction paper with pencil.  I drew some handy little illustrations, wrote the title in magic marker on the front, sewed and/or glued (I’m fuzzy on this part) and ta-da! my first book. Regardless of the quality of the finished project, I held a product of my own thoughts in my seven-year-old hands.

My love for writing was not reinforced eleven years later by my freshman writing class at Western Michigan University.  My instructor was a grad student with an obsession for the blues singer and guitarist BB King.  Our class of twenty or so eighteen-year-olds raised mostly on pop radio, were treated to BB’s music on a regular basis.  The turntable sat on an unoccupied desk top as much a member of the class as each of the students.

I was already beyond intimidated by college.  Being asked to contribute original thoughts at a moment’s notice in front of strangers was not my forte.  I disliked being the center of attention in such situations immensely.  Giant lecture halls where I could remain comfortably anonymous were by far my favorite classes at that age. 

This class, was a nightmare for me.  The King fan instructor was intense, direct, and not warm and fuzzy at all.  He actually was kind of fuzzy… scraggly blonde beard and long, forgotten hair. And he was warm, although not in personality, he was frequently sweaty.  He consistently wore sandals, loose pants, and hooded pullovers he may have picked up at a cool market in Mexico.  He was completely focused on the craft of writing (when he wasn’t focused on BB King) and was determined to get the class focused on those things as well. 

We were challenged to write about impactful moments in our lives, to dig deep and discover how those experiences shaped us.  Other student wrote of death, and separation, illness, abuse, poverty, and some of great accomplishment and success.  I wrote about what a great guy my Dad was and how I was going to marry my high school sweet heart.  I don’t think the instructor liked me.  My most lasting memory of this class was that it pointed out how average my life was.  At the end of the semester, I left that class with a sense of insignificance as well as one of foreboding. 

Because no one continues an average life forever.

As time progressed my mostly average life was punctuated by some not so average moments.  A situation that rocked my marriage to the core and a dangerous pregnancy being the most pronounced.  Both of those times ended up good though.  My marriage and my child survived and thrived.  Life was average again.  Here it is by the numbers…by age 40 I had one marriage (high school sweetheart) three children, almost zero financial concern, and one significant loss, my grandpa when I was 22.  I had great friendships, great relationships with my family, and a rock solid sense of security in my life. 

Somehow, through all those years, that old sense of foreboding that came to light in freshman writing, remained a tiny flame in the back of my mind.  Sometimes I would wonder when it would happen.  When the average would succumb. 

Then, it did. 

Now my life is not average.  It’s less average than I ever would had guessed.  I’ve come a long way since that ENG 110 class and my love for writing has been reinforced by encouragement from my Facebook community.  My experiences have given me a lot to write about and that’s what I’ll do in this blog. Welcome to my perfectly imperfect life.