Heartaches and Healing

This morning when I should have been working on curling my hair or ironing my shirt, I sat on the edge of the bed rummaging through my Craig box. I do that twice a year...every January around his birthday and every July sometime during the week he died.

It may seem stupid, but I really don't care. It's what I do. It's how I remember my friend that I knew for entirely too short a time. I miss him terribly and twelve years of distance hasn't really softened the hurt all that much.

My Craig box holds a tiny collection of things that remind me of who he was...and who he was to me. Newspaper clippings about the accident, about his death...his obituary. A business card I snatched from the holder before someone came to clean out his desk. A rose from the wreath that hung on the front door of the office in the days following. A jawbreaker, still in its wrapper...from my desk drawer, where I'd stashed it after he threw it at me to get my attention one day. A photocopy of my first ever time card, which he had signed. Somehow just sifting through those things reminds me of the comfort of his friendship during a very lonely time in my life.

Last year his mother sent me copies of a couple of snapshots she had...and one sits in a little frame on my entertainment center. Mom asked me once who he was and when I told her, she issued me a pretty puzzled look. I know it probably doesn't make any sense why I need to have a framed picture displayed...but I do.

Craig's death marked one of the most pivotal moments in my faith. The moment when I had to decide if I was going to follow God even though He took away the very person I asked Him to heal, or if I was going to accept what would be a lifetime of puzzles...and trust His heart anyway.

To think of that day twelve years ago still makes me cry. I remember walking into the office and hearing the news of the accident. I remember walking around in a fog for days. I remember riding in the back of my parents' van down to my sister's pool the day of his funeral, huddled against the window so they couldn't see my faces, whispering how sorry I was that I just couldn't go to the funeral...I just couldn't say goodbye.

And yet if that had never happened, I never would have known how God could step in and so tenderly fix a broken heart and steady a wavering faith.

So today...and tomorrow...and all days...I think of him and miss him. But I also am thankful for healing and hope. Because I have found them even in the hurt.