It’s not always easy to walk backwards with our friends. Knowing someone for over 40 years and seeing how still they depend on themselves to live the hard life they live makes me want to run in the other direction. Their frustration, blindness to truth and pathways they take is not often healthy for me. We rode our horses together, we stayed up late and talked about our future and dreams. Heck we even complained about our parents and shared secrets that now I can’t even recall, but we never shared our faith. Now wait - we shared that we are both believers, we both pray, and we both have church history that goes back to our birth. I was raised in the world of grandparents who I saw read and pray, always taken to Sunday school and volunteered at church. She knew that when something happened in my life I responded with - as much as as deep as my faith would allow, God will lead me or He will protect me, I will get through this because of him. She has had her shares of sadness and pain - and with every event the issue the pathway and the outcome I never heard her able to lay herself in the hands of the master. Rather she has always gotten angry, bitter, even tried to get even. Her first memory of being offended is still as vivid as if it were yesterday. I have questioned, prayed for, invited, supplied, and shared what our church can offer. Which in the past has been everything from her utilities, clothes,food, and all they asked was can you come attend a Dave Ramsey class. When her son wanted to attend with our kids her response was - “It is not a real church.” He loved being there and we hoped maybe through him finding real truth she would too. Sadly she will begin visiting him in prison next week. So over the past many years we have watched her guide her only child into a similar pathway of anger, faithlessness , blindness to the truth and we have had to make the decision to distance ourselves of the daily weekly life of friendship. It was pointless to hear the differences in our conversation to know that it runs from faith to everyday life. When our son had an issue with a teacher we got involved to dig deeper, supported them or our son and often punished for his future. Yet, when her son had issue he got a new toy and still to this day the schools, teachers, scout leaders, councilors were the problem. So over the years we have kept her and her son in our lives at a distance- there to offer long conversations or to share information if we had anything to offer- but the path her son had taken was no longer safe and we needed to live openly that if we are walking with God we have boundaries and we have standards. Old saying, birds of a feather flock together. So now as she waits to get that few minutes of phone time from her son, my heart breaks for both of them. My prayer is that in prison he will finally be able to know the true God - he will be able to see how God allows people to go into the darkest place to actually see the light of truth. Does my friend see that this long pathway to prison is because of the choices made, or the lack of following the truth? No it is the jury they could have given him another chance - EVEN THOUGH HE SAID, “I am guilty, I wanted to go to prison.” So now I am having dinner every week with my longtime friend, it is not joyful, it is not something I am looking forward to but it is what I know I am called to do- it is hard to still hear the blindness and the energy that has kept her denial. Oh she won’t eat fish this Friday - lent you know but she won’t be in any church either - just can’t find one she likes. Do I think she is lost - I really have no idea - I just know that the way she sees God, and how little she has felt his love has made her life so sad and as I pray heaven will be her home - she is an example of a life lived in the world. I choose to meet every week so maybe just maybe I can know how to pray for her, be a better example of walking with our Lord, see her as her son comes home from prison saved and changed. I believe he has been saved from a dark life to a chance to make a choice. So I will have a gentle reconnection to a friend who does not bring out the best of me but she does bring out the best of God. Sidenote because of this entry I also know I have not actually prayed as I should for her - I have not prayed for someone if not me to deliver her to the Lord. That will be the way she will find peace. He will heal her soul. I know both of them have been in a prison. She in her own mind and ways, and her son living completely in her ways. This is not meant to be judging rather a lifetime of suffering without God. Don’t we all sometimes build our own prison bars?
