I had two best friends all the way from 4th grade through all of high school. One of these guys lived a block from me all those years, and the other will be in my wedding this upcoming month. These guys have been there for me in ways that no one else has or could ever be. They were with me through the years that someone needs a best friend most, when you struggle with who you are and do everything you can to figure out who you want to be. People come and go throughout your life. I've had other best friends, and other very good friends, people that were influential in my life and people that have impacted me in huge ways, and these two guys were there through it all.
One of my friends has had it pretty tough, he has a physically and mentally challenged brother, someone we have all grown to love as our own brother, and whose mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when he was very young, and she was disabled due to the horrendous muscle disease. The other friend had a family who accepted all of us boys at all times, and his mom and dad became surrogate parents to close to eight or nine boys who constantly found their way to their home, and his mom would always welcome us with a hug and usually some baked goods, and even long conversations into the night.
Both of my friends have experienced loss in the last few months. The first friend's mother passed away finally from her twenty year battle with MS and the second passed earlier this year from a freak embolism while in the hospital for an unrelated reason. One was a shock and a surprise, and both were tragic and devastating. But here I am, affected because my friends have gone through something that cannot be explained in words. It's hard to grasp and to understand. There's so much pain and sorrow, confusion and bewilderment.
It's confusing to go through times like this, because we all know we're going to lose people as we live our lives, but we don't ever want to accept it as a way of life, and it's shocking when we do lose someone. Yet, there's something, someone that lets us know that even though we have lost, and we don't quite know what to do, it'll be alright. We have grace and love to fall back on, and when we turn our eyes off our own pain and put it into the hands of the One who can carry it and us, we can find peace. And even though no one wants to hear it when they are hurting so bad, we must remember that God can in fact keep us intact. The book "the Hiding Place," there is a quote that can get us through times like this, and it is "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still." Which, when looking at mortality and pain, can be a great thing to remember.
B
