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Within the next four weeks, I will say goodbye to some of my closest friends. Since I want this blog to reflect joyfulness and lessons learned, I can’t spend the next few paragraphs moping and sobbing about how devastated I am. I must somehow find words through the tears to tell the beauty they brought to my life.
I know that with the blogosphere, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, digital photography, email, and good ole’ snail mail, there are an endless number of ways to stay e-connected to friends who move away. But I’ve never been very good with long-distance relationships, and regardless, it’s no substitute for feeling someone’s spit on your face when you make them laugh too hard, hiking up a rock face together toting each other’s kids, or spending a long evening crying on a shoulder when your world is ending.
So to me, friends moving away is a harsh goodbye. We will do our best to keep up, but things won’t ever be the same. So here’s to remembering how they changed my life.
Melissa and Stephen. I watched you wrestle with making wise, godly decisions for your kids. Where to send them to school, where to birth them, whether to let them eat another cupcake, how to help them achieve independence, how to work their problems out with each other on their own, how to get them to sleep, what forms of discipline were appropriate, how to help them stop thumb-sucking, when to give in, when to say yes, when to say no, and when to stop saying anything and just be. What impacted me more than the decisions you have made, is your wrestling to make them. The charge of parenthood is no small matter to you, and you take it seriously. Your decisions are not made lightly, or without much prayer. The counsel of people you respect mattered a lot to you along the discovery process, but once a decision was firm, you weren’t too concerned by other people’s opinions of it. Too liberal, too conservative; too risky, too safe; in the end, you had already been through those questions on your face before God, and people’s objections or criticism did not shake you.
Melissa, you taught me to get low and look into children’s eyes when photographing them. Don’t look down at them like every adult does (physically), but get on their level and straight into their face to reveal their soul shining through their eyes. I don’t know why, but I think of this all the time now when I look at the work of other photographers.
Stephen and Melissa, I remember a few years ago when I was pursuing you for leadership in our home group. You offered to help, as long as I didn’t give you an official title or position. As long as you weren’t “Captain” or “Coordinator”, and could be person-helping-out-a-lot-without-a-name, you would serve. Now, as you leave our church, we are losing our Children’s Ministry Director, our Greeting and Hospitality Director, our Vineyard Leadership Institute Coordinator, our Announcements Coordinator, our Website Manager, and one of our regular Preachers. Too bad you finally changed your mind, because now we have to figure out how to replace half the leadership positions in our church.
You were there for me when my husband first received his ADHD diagnosis, and I thought for sure my world was ending. You listened to months of ranting, anger, disappointment, and fear, and managed to squeeze bits of wise advice in with your listening ear. You were some of the people who kept me sane when I thought my marriage was ending. As a result, I give you part of the credit that it is still together.
I remember three years ago, when all our friends were moving away or leaving the church at the same time, and our community group of 16 people dissolved into the four of us – Melissa, Stephen, Benjamin, and I. One Sunday morning, in a puddle of tears, I looked in Melissa’s eyes, and said, “Are you going to leave me too?” You assured me that you and Stephen were still committed, not giving up, not leaving. Unfortunately I had given up on our shrunken community group, and planned to end it and quit leadership. But you stuck with us. You didn’t give up. And a year and half later, the group had grown so much it multiplied into two. That would never have happened without your commitment. I remember later Melissa came up to me later to remind me that you did have plans to move from San Antonio some time in the distant future, and you were so concerned how that would affect me. I was okay then. I’m not okay now!
Stephen, once at community group you said something about a life experience I was sharing, and it was showed the deepest insight and understanding into my pain that anyone has ever shown in that hurtful memory. I had experienced significant rejection in the situation, from men in particular, and having you, a man, put words to the depth of my pain, brought healing to that painful place in my heart. It has never really hurt since then, because every time I think of it, I remember your words, and I know that someone cared, someone understood, and that is enough.
Melissa, you remember what is going on in my life, and make it a point to ask me about things that matter. I am so horrible at this. Sometimes people tell me their plans for the weekend, which involve some significant event, and minutes later, I am asking, “So what are your plans for the weekend?” Or I see them Monday and totally forget to ask about it. You always remember, and I can’t tell you how meaningful this is. I now have a sense of urgency to do the same for others.
Stephen you taught me that it you can be a powerful, committed Christian and a Libertarian at the same time. That it is okay to go against the “Christian” flow when the flow has the rest of us with our heads stuck in the mud of tradition.
Several years after graduating college, where I built several deep, lifelong friendships, I concluded those kind of friendships just didn’t happen after college. College was a unique season where you spent loads of time hanging out, learning together, and struggling through together. That struggle creates deep spiritual and emotional bonds. The joy of overcoming together knits you yet again. You taught me I was wrong – you have been these kind of friends.
Melissa, you taught me that I can eventually have everything in common with someone I didn’t initially think I could relate to. Now I have a hard time thinking of things we don’t have in common. Well, there is that issue of, okay, not a hard time, just, there’s not too many left anymore!
Stephen I remember how you kept reaching out to those high schoolers in the community group you and Melissa were first in charge of. You never judged them or lost hope for them. I want to be more like this.
Melissa, your courage in finding a better way to bring your children into the world has certainly encouraged several women in our church to do the same. Thank you for the privilege of bieng part of your children’s births. With Julian, I remember standing at the head of the bed while the midwives helped you push, praying you through your first VBAC home birth. I remember your distress at a large birth mark on Julian’s head, and how I licked my thumb and scrubbed off the purplish dried blood. With Schroeder, I remember when you were six or seven months pregnant, dreaming that I missed the birth. The day he arrived, I woke up early in the morning from a dream where I was calling into work because Stephen had called to say the baby was coming. Thirty minutes later, my phone rang, and I sped to your house. Even so, I still missed Schroeder’s moment since he barrelled his way into the world so quickly. I did arrive for the immediate aftermath however, with Melissa still breathless from pain and Stephen in shock from nearly delivering his own child unassisted. Good times. I am sad to be missing Maggie’s birth, but encouraged for some of your family who have missed out on the others, to see how beautiful birth can be. Melissa, you have never been more beautiful than those moments when all your determination is wrapped up in the single-focus of bringing your child from water to air. You glow with feminine beauty, the courage of a mother, and the strength only God can bring to moments like these.
Your kids are arriving at the age when they will begin reflecting the values imparted to them. During one church workday when your family was helping, D’arcy came up to me, begging for something she could do to help. Once completed with that task, she promptly found me for another. She cleaned toys, sorted screws, carried out bags and bags of trash, and kept asking for more. I remember thinking, “This child is five! She should be sitting in front of a movie, playing, or otherwise entertaining herself. I’m sure it’s not this easy to get her to clean up her room or her own toys, but here, she is serving the church with cheerful eagerness.” This quality is one you don’t find in many adults, let alone five year-olds! But there she was, diligently following the example set for her by her parents. It was your modeling, not your instruction, that evoked this action in her. Melissa, I read on your blog when you mentioned to her later how impressed I was, she shrugged and replied, “I love my church.”
Thanks for loving our church, Williams family. You’ve had plenty of great opportunities to give up, get offended, quit, or follow the self-serving road. You haven’t taken any of them. If our body of Christ could inherit just this from you, it would change us. At our hands you experienced insecurity, rejection, misunderstanding, humiliation, abandonment, slander, and failure. Yet none of this stopped you from pressing through for the cause of Christ and His church. This is the life that Christ lived on this earth, that He calls us to, that you are living. May His power be with you to continue living it, shaping your children for it, and inspiring those who know you to make it their own.