Today I was out shopping and I was sooooo hungry. Sometimes I worry about myself because if I don't eat every few hours I just shut down . . . headache, tired, and grumpy. I try not to talk to people if I'm hungry because it's not usually very pleasant for them. So as I was walking around not talking to anyone, I was thinking about my friend, Katie. We met in the summer of '00, both doing a Summer of Service in Chico (this is a Youth With a Mission program where you spend the summer running summer camps, going on missions trips, getting closer to God, etc). We met within the first two days and by the end of the summer, if someone saw one of us without the other he always asked where she was. If that makes sense. Anyway, we stayed friends after the summer was over. She's a little younger than I am but she's always been rad and just a great friend. I went to visit her (she lives a couple hours away) about a month ago after having not seen each other for nearly a year. It was great. We really built up our relationship and talked again about how our friendship will go on forever because God is the foundation of it and "a strand of three cords is not easily broken." We even wrote a song together. Within a week, something changed. Everything changed. She had suddenly decided to disobey her dad over something stupid, got caught, had a fight, and used that as an excuse to not care about anything. Suddenly, she was partying with the girls she had so vehemently criticized when I was up there. Suddenly, she was driving to Nevada (six hours away) to spend a few days at a boy friend's house (she promises they only slept together in the literal sense). Suddenly, she was complaining about trying to go to work with a hangover. I didn't criticize her, as much as I wanted to. She already knew what she was doing wasn't the best thing for her. She was disgusted with herself and choosing to wallow in self pity about it, and all her other "good" friends basically told her "You're screwing up, get back to us when you're good enough." That's what she heard, anyway. I've done the tough love thing with her before and she appreciated it, but I didn't feel like this was the time for that. Nevertheless, we talked less. She knew I wasn't mad at her, but all of us are less interested in talking to people who care about us when we're doing something wrong. So today as I thought about her, I was thinking how frustrating it was that someone I cared so much for was hurting herself. Then I decided to think of all the reasons I love her. The most prominent memory that came back was this: One night during our SOS, I called home from the phone booth in the living room of the lodge that all thirty of our team were living in. I found out that my birth mother had decided at the last minute to keep the baby she just had . . . she had been planning on giving it up for adoption by close friends of our family's, a couple who had been trying to have a baby for 15 years. When I heard that another baby was going to be hurt by her (it's her fourth, all three others have been taken away from her), I cried. I sat in the phone booth and cried as I asked my mom questions, and concerned teammates put their palms against the glass or peered nervously in as they passed to and fro. When I hung up, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I walked to the playground in the dark, and laid down on the spinny thing (aka merry-go-round) to look at the stars, hurt, and stop my fool tears. I knew someone would tell Katie that I was upset, and the spinny thing was our special place. I didn't go there with the intention of her following, but I think I knew she'd show up. Faithful friend that she is, she did come down about twenty minutes later. She just laid down next to me on the spinny thing and told me it was ok to cry. I told her how I hate crying and how the tears run down your cheeks and make them red and she was like, "Well, then this is a good time to do it because you're on your back and the tears will just pool in your eyes." I did start crying, and she had me explain what was going on. She said some nice things to comfort me and after a while I was myself again, enough to let her know that the tears, in fact, had pooled in my ears and that it felt weird. There were so many other things, too. Like when we were in Mexico and we shared a cup of bottled water to brush our teeth every morning. We had this elaborate system so that we never got each other's mouth spit or anything, but one day I zoned out and accidentally dipped my wet toothbrush into the water before we had rinsed our mouths out with it. Katie's awesome; she rinsed her mouth out with that water anyway. Tonight I saw her online and we talked a little and I told her how I'd been thinking about that night on the spinny thing. She remembers it well, and told me she wanted to help so badly but there was nothing she could do. Also, she told me she's done with drugs and wants to come see me. Yeah, I've been crying today, but much happier tears. |