Holy Friendship

 To love. To be loved. Holy work.

As I continue to venture into adulthood with all of its' roles (or masks): mother, wife, sister, friend, daughter, colleague, neighbor -- each role continues to change and shape, offering more levels and depths of pain and love. Parents age, parenthood exhausts you, your friends and siblings experience unfair, painful circumstances you cannot fix. The reality of vocation -- God loving his creation through our ordinary living and working -- becomes an anchoring truth and encouragement when the burdens of life take over.

Recently, I had lunch with life-long friends. The friends who loved me as a scrawny, terrified, insecure 16 year old continue to love me now as a pudgy, exhausted, hormonal 32 year old.  Life changes and stays the same, all at the same time. Though I have changed, their love for me has not. Though life has brought bigger and greater challenges, I still find rest in their friendships. God has given me: joy, love, hope, grace, and comfort through their friendships. They are God's masks in my life: God hiding behind and working through their love.

The same women who consoled me after my first high school heart break, carried me through years of infertility and miscarriages. Two very different kinds and levels of hurt. Occurring in two very different seasons of life. Yet, they all loved me the same. I felt loved the same. A beautiful reminder of God's love in our life -- no matter where we are in life or what we are carrying -- His love remains the same. He is not too big or holy to comfort the heart-broken sophomore, nor is He too elusive to console the infertile. 

As life has dramatically delivered difficult, heavy, broken burdens to my friends: deployment, medical trauma, terminal illness, a broken heart, a sick child -- I cannot solve their hurt. I cannot take it away. But I can sit with them. I can cry for them. My heart can break with theirs. I can hold their hand and rub their back. I can speak hope into the despair. Comfort in their pain. Peace in the turmoil. 

And the miracle? Through those intuitive acts of friendship: God is working. God is sitting with them, God is crying for them. God is holding them. God is speaking hope, comfort and peace. In my ordinary living, He is reaching down to befriend and love on His created. 

What an image. What a gift. What a truth. What a reality. 

"Our vocations are not how we make a living; our vocations are how life has made us... Open your eyes and look around to see where you live, who you live with, and what they do. There, written in the lives of those people, are your callings. God has summoned you to care for them. To love them."  -Chad Bird

Thank you Jesus for giving me wonderful people to love. Thank you loving me through four strong, loving, compassionate women. Provide strength beyond their ability and peace beyond understanding as they venture through this side of heaven. May our friendship continue to be a mask of a loving and caring God.