I need to talk well...write

I have someone in my life that is very special to me.
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We have been friends for over fourteen years. Fourteen years is A LONG time.

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If your authentic...fourteen years of friendship requires showing the good, the bad, and the ugly. It requires sharing the broken pieces of yourself. Trusting they will be treated with dignity and respect until you are ready. Ready for them to be placed and glued back together. It requires trust, and when trust is severed the only thing capable of repairing it, is consistency.

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The past few years with J have been hard. Life choices are being made. Choices I am unable to support. Slowly the things that I could support and uplift in their life became less and less until the reasons we called ourselves 'friends' got lost and hidden under some couch cushions. They have been successful in alienating people in all areas of their life. Their parents, sister, brother, friends, the list goes on.

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When you love someone. I mean fiercely love them, you lose the ability to simply stop loving them. You love them long past reasoning would allow. You love them through all the hurts. You love them despite all failed attempts. You try to love them through their inability to accept love.

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and then...

you

take

a

break

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I took a self imposed break from our friendship last August. I needed it for mental health. I needed to get some perspective. I needed to heal.
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Healing required me to mourn the loss of the person I believed J to be,

to mourn the loss of expectations,

and to mourn the loss of a friend.

After I mourned I felt FREE...

incredibly, wonderfully, FREE!

That break is the best thing I could have done.
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No matter how hard it is to be obedient to what God wants for us there is always the sense of freedom once we have choosen to follow him.

I am forever in amazement of how ironic

"taking our cross and following Jesus"

leads us to this wonderfully freeing life.

But that idea of freedom is for another post.

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In January I felt led to reconnect. I felt God telling me that I had been healed of hurts, of failed expectations, and that it was time to try again. Why try, you ask? Jesus...he never gave up on me, and I will never give up on J. In January, things looked positive. The initial response was

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"Your email means a lot to me.

I think of you and pray for you literally every day.

I have been praying about what I should do about our relationship,

and I feel like your email is an answer to prayer.

Thank you.

I did feel like our time over Thanksgiving went pretty well, and it was good to see you. I accept your apology, and I thank you for it. I think, to my surprise, that I have felt a little judged. I think this is not so much a result of anything you have done as a result of my own discomfort with knowing that you don't agree with the way I'm living my life. I think it's more difficult with you because we've been so close, and we've been on the same page with many things for so long. So I care what you think, but we don't have to agree. And just because we don't agree, it doesn't mean that you are judging me. I know that you have absolutely done the best you can, and that's all I can ask of anyone.

I would like to pick things up again.

I know that I still want to have a friendship with you.

I love you."

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Since then it has been nothing but the same old, same old.

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Frustrating communication.

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The latest is last week. I worked last Sunday and J was in town for Mother's Day. I did not go to church because I had to work that night and was really tired. J and I talked that morning and J was going to come and say hi/bye/I love you/hug, before leaving town. I woke up at 5:00 p.m. with a message from J saying they had been on the road for a 1/2 hour and just remembered they 'forgot' to come and see me.

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Unfortunately, they do not, at this point in time, have the LUXURY of 'forgetting'.

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I'm hurt.

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I've spent the last week thinking how to respond. I've refrained from making any contact because I know it will only result in me making a snarky remark. I'm good at snarky remarks.

Trust that is broken is only compounded by each and every subsequent offense.

The only thing that I can say for sure...is that I am darn proud of myself for the way that I have been dealing with this situation. I no longer take it as a personal attack on who I am, I no longer take being neglected as a value of my worth.

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and one more thing...

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I will not give up. because...

1.If I speak with human eloquence

and angelic ecstasy

but don't love,

I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2If I speak God's Word with power,

revealing all his mysteries

and making everything plain as day,

and if I have faith that says to a mountain,

"Jump," and it jumps,

but I don't love,

I'm nothing.

3-7If I give everything I own to the poor

and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr,

but I don't love,

I've gotten nowhere.

So, no matter what I say,

what I believe,

and what I do,

I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always "me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies

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I have trouble with some of those. If and until God gives up on me, I will continue to try and live these words. because...

Inspired speech will be over some day;

praying in tongues will end;

understanding will reach its limit.

We know only a portion of the truth,

and what we say about God is always incomplete.

But when the Complete arrives,

our incompletes will be canceled.
11When I was an infant at my mother's breast,

I gurgled and cooed like any infant.

When I grew up,

I left those infant ways for good.
12We don't yet see things clearly.

We're squinting in a fog,

peering through a mist.

But it won't be long before the weather clears

and the sun shines bright!

We'll see it all then,

see it all as clearly as God sees us,

knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now,

until that completeness,

we have three things to do to lead us toward

that consummation:

Trust steadily in God,

hope unswervingly,

love extravagantly.

And the best of the three is

love

(1st Corinthians 13, the message)

Thanks to all my bloggy friends for allowing me to get this off my chest. It really helps to kinda talk it out. Re-reading the amazing version of the love chapter by the message is breath stopping. I am going to print that out and put it somewhere I can see it always.

Jesus...you know the intentions of my heart...protect me, fortify me,

and I will do what I can to keep my end of this bargain.

I love you

without my love for you

I would be incapable of

loving anyone else.