Jan

There is a certain feeling when the spring rain falls on these mountains in western North Carolina. The air smells like chimney smoke and the chill is unexpected. Today it makes me wish for the warmth of yesterday's sunshine. 

My friend Jan is dying. This truth hangs like a thick vapor over our time together. We have always spoken of the “real,” been brutally (and blissfully) honest in our friendship. It is one of the things I love about us.

We are unlikely friends. Born into disparate subcultures, we’ve never had that much in common. And yet I count her among my “life friends.” Despite our contrasts, we share a  deep respect and genuine affection for one another. I have felt strongly the honor of being asked into her life, even twenty-five years ago when we first met. We could have scratched our heads and walked away from each other, but instead we were drawn to figure out our differences and find common ground.

         Indeed the “real” in our friendship is common ground. It came to us harshly in those early years, when Jan was first diagnosed with breast cancer. We were young enough that we didn’t expect such things. And we thought surely this is not the sort of thing a good God does.

         Yet those first years changed us. The questions mounted as Jan faced her grueling treatment, followed by the illness and premature death of her mother, whom she loved dearly. Her questions reflected my own, as I began to acknowledge the impact on me and my own family of the early loss of my brother Steve to leukemia, when I was just a toddler. We thrashed a good bit, struggling to understand how tragedy could signal anything about the existence of a good God.

         Within our different circumstances and contexts (by now I had moved to Oregon), we asked and wrestled and struggled with this God we were trying to trust. And over time  a miracle emerged. Not the miracle of a cure or the removal of our pain, but rather, the miracle that we both kept believing, trying to trust, this God who is okay with our questions, though not especially forthcoming with the answers.

         This time, as I visit and spend time with Jan, I am struck by our relative calmness. Of course it is punctuated by moments of panic and grief, but it is not as thrashing. It seems we are trusting in a different way, with twenty plus years of life in between. The questions are still here, but they don’t seem to matter as much. We have come to accept that we don’t always get answers.

         It doesn’t seem possible to me that this vibrant, joyful and raucous friend of mine is in the process of dying, though we lament it openly. Yesterday she took me to a store on Main Street to buy me North Carolina souvenirs, “because you need to have something to remember this place by, and besides, ‘you can’t take it with you.’” I weep quietly as I sort through the T-shirts, accept the gifts, knowing that I will never forget. 

Addendum: I got to visit Jan one more time, about a month before her death in January of 2012. I think of her often and miss her dearly. 

Winding Roads

There is a winding street that serves as a short-cut on my way to pick up my "foster" daughter from school most days. It takes me by a house I lived in the summer I arrived in Eugene. It was open as a furnished rental for just five weeks, and after two weeks of couch-surfing, I jumped at the chance. It is in a part of Eugene that I have not stayed in touch with, so this route has brought my thoughts back to that season and place.

Twenty two years ago last month I quit my job in fisheries at Clemson University to embark on an adventure. A few months later, I landed in Oregon. I came with a naïve belief in God’s provision, heading west without a place to live, a job, or any real contacts, other than the summer program I was enrolling in to study linguistics.  I suppose I’ve been reflecting on that particular season in my life lately, because I am regularly driving by the house where I landed that first summer.

            I recall sitting in its darkening living room one evening, wondering what in the world I was doing there. The romance of the adventure had worn thin in that moment and I was desperately homesick. The shadows were lengthening as I sat on the floor with my back against someone else’s sofa in a room that shared none of my taste. I am not a materialistic person, so it surprised me that I missed my home—the things that were familiar to me, the security of the income I had left behind.

            By this time that summer I had by chance met Wes and Carol, and learned about this thing called McKenzie Study Center. My shaky faith paradigm was beginning to crack open in places. When I ran out of gas across town because I had no money to fill the tank, it triggered a crisis. It is somewhat embarrassing to admit this, but it showed me that I actually believed God would never let me run out of gas, because I was becoming a missionary and He would provide. That was the deal, right?

            Little did I recognize that since my reluctant conversion to Christianity, I had bought the package and established a quid pro quo arrangement with God. If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I had not yet to asked how this arrangement fit with the gospel of grace I had first been drawn to, the day that God had tackled me against my will. That day, I was immediately committed to the idea that God would do the changing, if any changing was to be done. In just four short years, I had traded that belief for an assumption that somehow my dedication was responsible for keeping me on God's good side.

With Wes and Carol and at MSC, I smelled something different. It looked like these folks didn’t buy the quid pro quo picture. I wanted to understand more. After my summer program was over, I surprised everyone including myself, and decided to stay.

            Ironically, God did provide. I soon had a job in fisheries just up the road in Corvallis, and a house to ship my stored belongings to, one that overlooked a beautiful pasture with a breathtaking view of the Coburg Hills. I took these events and others as signs, signs that God was directing me, though in a very different direction than I had anticipated. Within two years, I joined the staff of McKenzie Study Center. I spent the next eighteen years pursuing a calling that I knew was from God.

            It is no wonder the winding drive by that house brings me back to those days. In another unexpected twist, two years ago last month, I was asked to leave the ministry that I knew was given to me by God. It has been a painful parting. And yet I am certain that as God gives, He also takes away. I am on a different road now, similarly uncertain of what lies ahead. And driving by the little house in west Eugene reminds me that I have been here before. And it reminds me that God provides, though seldom what we expect.