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.
May God continue to give you grace to be present - to Jan, to God, to spring, to dying, to questions, to waiting for the answers... You are a blessing! thanks.
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