We were about to pull out. All the bags and beach towels were stowed in the back of our car, with trickles of sand hiding in the corners. Cheerful goodbyes all around, until I got to my old friend. As I hugged her, a gulf of emotions unleashed themselves. We had enjoyed just a few days alone with them at the ocean, after spending our annual beach week with our grown children. It had been many years since we spent that much time together. What overwhelmed me was the fact that we had come full circle. There and back again.
Life is filled with bends in the road. There are moves, job changes, aging, church turnovers, school progressions, not to mention the shifts that come about as we move from one demographic to the other. Ken and I are baby boomers, but the Gen-X's and Millennials came right behind us. Throughout all these life changes, what is unpleasant are the relationship crashes that sometimes occur along the way. This friend was offended. That one was left behind. We didn't continue to see eye-to-eye on a subject. Our children had a fuss. One party moved away from the other politically. Disagreements. Difficulties. Misjudgments. These things often ruin friendships. Sometimes you can't even figure out what happened. It just did. You emotionally move away from each other and neither side does enough to fix it. Or maybe you try and it just can't be fixed. Years go by and you marvel at what used to be and is no more.
Many years ago, through a weird set of misunderstandings and life-junctures, we separated from our old friends. Our children had been very close but our paths parted and we were all left wondering what happened. With lots of kids and responsibilities looming between us, we dove back into our lives with our noses to the ground. Time marched on. We had changed churches too, so we were not in close proximity anymore. There were some half-hearted attempts to figure it out, but maybe too much pride or too many problems got in the way. It was like a boat that had sprung a leak and was on the bottom of the lake. Nobody knew why it leaked or how to go about raising it back up.
One fine, beautiful day, years later, I was sitting on our porch reading my Bible. I don't know how God breaks up our fallow ground, how He reaches and stirs up our souls to repentance, but He does do it. That morning, I couldn't remember what had mattered so much that it broke up our friendship. But I did recall what I did wrong. The last thing I wanted to do that day was to call my old friend. (I don't want to think I'm proud, but guess what?) I picked up the phone and rang her, hoping she wouldn't answer. Of course she did. It's such a pain to cry when you're trying to talk. The words spilled out and skittered like dry pintos on the floor. I tried to explain what happened, then gave up and just told her I had been wrong. It's not like "I apologize." That's a pretty, polished stone that you offer someone. "I was wrong" is like handing them a knife and falling down on the floor, completely at their mercy. It was me. And that's what I'm responsible for. I asked her to forgive me for my attitude, for my lack of love, for the places where I failed her. She did, and then she asked me the same. We talked for a long while, hung up, then went back to our mutually busy worlds being lived out an hour and a half apart from each other. Over the years, we have talked occasionally, keeping in touch through social media and our childrens' lives. Those halcyon days of movie nights with a dozen kids between us, beach vacations and church suppers are no more. Our offspring are spreading their wings and repopulating the earth in their own new horizons.
She and her husband invited Ken and I to come to their beach cottage for a few days after we finished our annual family trek to Florida. We were thankful to hang out and catch up, eating, laughing, enjoying the company and the water. It was brief but very sweet. And as we were preparing to leave, the ocean tide in my heart burst open. As I hugged her and said goodbye, I felt the essence of heaven, of what forgiveness and redemption really mean. There was a whole lot said, without saying a word.
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