Faithful Friends

I alluded to this in an earlier post, but I want to mention it again. Once I got to this part of my desert, my grief was so great that I had not only no desire to spend time with friends, but I also had no fortitude to reach out to them. I actually had several friends that I either lost entirely during this time or I came precariously close to losing them.

I wanted to care.

I really did.

But my energies were expended entirely on breathing and remembering to shower and trying to force down food at some point every day and doing my best to work. I have a feeling I may never know how often my co-workers stepped in without a word to fill in when I was rendered incapable. I've thanked them...but am not sure they understand just how much it meant to know they would pitch in even when they didn't fully know what was wrong with me.

But I had some dear friends who just showed up. They pushed their way into my life and even if I resisted them, they stayed.

Bless them.

I told you in the last desert post that the Friday night before Memorial Day, our student worker, Rachel, took me to Ivanhoe's for a giant strawberry shortcake as a belated happy birthday treat. And after that, Faith showed up to talk to me for a couple of hours. Those were two blessings.

Of course during this time, the dearest friend I had was God Himself. This excerpt from Streams in the Desert from that Friday night shows the kind of love I started to share with Him.

“Jacob won the victory and the blessing not by wrestling but by clinging…We too will not win the victory in prayer until we cease our struggling. We must give up our own will and throw our arms around our Father’s neck in clinging faith…We are strong with God only to the degree that self is conquered and is dead. Blessings come not by wrestling but by clinging to Him in faith."

It reminded me of the night I'd wrestled with God on Isaac's behalf early on in the desert. There had been much struggling that night...and I knew I had to get to the place where I could give up and cling.

Saturday, God's faithfulness through friends continued. I was in the middle of a cleaning project that day anyway, so it was perfect timing that Olivia stopped by with her dad and her boyfriend, and they loaded up a huge couch and enormous desk I needed to be rid of. I was giving her both things to help her start out her own home…It felt so freeing to be rid of this furniture that was far more than I could handle right then in my tiny home, but seeing the room completely vacated made me feel like someone should be moving in. Someone like Isaac. I tried so hard to stay with the project…to keep cleaning, even though I did not want to.

Early that afternoon, Jonathan called. He was driving from the lake back to town to work at the school and he wanted to check on me. I promptly burst into tears in his ear, and he patiently listened to my cries and confusions. I know that listening to meltdowns on the phone is probably not high on his list of fun things to do, so I immensely appreciated his willingness to listen to my babbling.

Later that afternoon, my phone rang, and I tripped over stuff I was trying to relocate to answer it. It was my friend Tim, who lives out of state but just happened to be visiting for the Indy 500. He wanted to know if I was home…turns out he was sitting in the driveway. I cleared a path to the door and collapsed into a sobbing heap in his arms the moment he walked in the door. Poor guy! He had no idea what he had just walked into! I continued hiccuping on him, and he led me over to the couch and just sat there with me for the next couple of hours, gently listening and offering words of comfort.

And I wrote, You have been so faithful today. Jonathan called this afternoon just when I was struggling most. And then a bit later, Tim came over. But even in all that, I ached to be with Isaac.