Redemption

Once upon a time, there were two young women. They had left their farming communities and had moved their belongings into the big city, probably using their dad's hog-smellin' half-ton to get the job done right. They'd never met one another, and moved into apartments at opposite ends of the big city. But life is weird, so one way or another, they met and began to create a series of adventures built on the themes of laughter and life.

There was snow-shoeing, all-you-can-eat spaghetti-ing, greasy spoon breakfast eating, pining after handsome hunks of manliness-ing, movie watching, body part piercing, other-country-travelling, tent sleeping, hair fussing, and other general hanging-around-ed-ness.

Then came the day and the season where entirely too much sharing crossed the boundaries of frienship and loyalties. Where hearts lay ripped and oozing on the floor of the foundations we'd built that friendship on. Where apologies and justifications were shouted at one another in the very same breath. Death of trust and loyalty dealt by "friendly fire".

Oh, we tried to bridge the abyss. Being "good Christians" and all, we worked hard against the scourges of grudge, revenge, disgust... But something was broken.

We grew up, life taking us this way and that. We lived through our mid to late twenties, and pretty well through our thirites with the memories of those times feeling well shadowed by the less than pleasant torture of our friendship's demise. But we had new lives to live, new sorrows to navigate, new friends to love. And so we were not crippled, only bruised.

And then one day, in the two seconds between the dinner table being set, and the children planting themselves on their chairs, I stole a moment to check my in-box. And I came back to the table with tears streaming down my face, my heart full, and lodged in my throat.

"Subject: Hello my old friend

Dear Joyce,
I spent the day looking through old photographs…and there you were, smiling at me, taking me back to a day in time when life seemed easier. I smiled back at you, I laughed aloud, and then I began to cry. So many regrets…what a fool I was. You were one of the greatest friends I ever had. I made so many stupid decisions in my 20’s. I am sorry! I can’t take any of it back and that makes me mad…mad at myself…mad at the world… I am sorry that it has taken me this long to say I am truly sorry…sorry for hurting you in a way that a friend never should…sorry for thinking only of myself.
Will you ever forgive me? Have you ever forgiven me? Maybe I have never forgiven myself...even after all these years."

OH THE REDEMPTION!!

OH! the reunion we shared after all those years. One more roadtrip, this time her doing the driving and me waiting with joy and anticipation. And then the hours and hours and hours of talking, reconnecting, redeeming, laughing, crying. How my friend had grown! How different to now spend time talking about the God we both love, the questions that no seven steps can adequately answer, the losses and sorrows that we'd had, the hope we shared in something Bigger.

And the hope I received that day, knowing that 17 or so years of a friendship lost could be redeemed in a second through her vulnerability, her sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, her lack of self-protectiveness. How anything that pains me now is not the final word. How time can be wiped away, how time itself can be redeemed.

How much of life hinges on a hope for things not yet fully seen.

But sometimes just a glimpse of that kind of redemption can be the wave to ride on and the energy to harness for today's not-yet redeemed voids.