Good morning…
I wake on the morning of an important funeral, a funeral I am not able to attend. Funny, but it feels somehow fitting for our funky friendship to experience no formal goodbye. Formal is not her way and neither is it mine.
We were strangers when she came to my living room for our weekly class. Shuffling over from the other side of life’s experiential tracks, she plopped down on my couch a few years back. Set side by side, my life looked easy and her past looked hard, having wrestled free from an addiction which masked her bipolar diagnosis. At first I saw our differences. Over time, I loved our sameness. I loved her. She loved me. God grew strong and thick between us.
On the first day of our new semester, she emailed me at 3:36 am: “hi Sue. Been looking forward to taday for months. But have 24 hr bug> Yuck. Please send syllabus if you can. Sick I wont be there. I miss you.”
At 7:49 am I wrote her back: “We will miss you today. If you want to swing by my mailbox and pick up your book this week, I can tape a syllabus in the front cover. Rest and get well.” That day she passed away resting in her bed. Emailing in the morning. Enjoying heaven by dinner time. If I could choose a path, I would follow my friend’s footsteps to our forever home.
Therefore, whether we are at home [on earth] or away from home [and with Him], it is our [constant] ambition to be pleasing to Him (2 Corinthians 5:9, AMP).
…Sue…
