25 Years and Counting

My best friend is AMAZING.

I admire her for so many things -mostly her ability to be my BFF for 25+ YEARS!  We've had rocky moments, as any relationship has, but we work through it.

We met my sophomore (her freshman) year at Purdue.  We were taking the same theatre class.  One day she had a question about a project and had seen me in the dorm, so went down to breakfast to see if she could catch up with me there.

Normally, I skipped breakfast, or grabbed a pop tart and ate it on the way. THAT day, though, they had chocolate chip coffee cake, so I was sitting down with that and a glass of milk, rejoicing in my good fortune.

We started talking that morning, kept it up that whole day and into the evening, and really, except for a few bleak moments, have been talking ever since.

Why?  Because she is AWESOME!!!

She can fix anything.  She can change spark plugs without benefit of light. She can stop an ugly spiral into darkness cold.  She is unrelentingly supportive of all my crazy dreams.  She really would let me live in her basement. (So would her mom, who is also awesome!)

She's a cool mom. She doesn't hover, has expectations, and is nice to her kids.  She loves her husband, and he loves her, and sometimes it is positively syrupy. (Her husband is really cool, too, though, so they match well.)

She has been there for me in some dark and ugly times.  She has been there during the "here, hold my beer, watch this!" moments.  She tells me exactly what she is thinking and doesn't pull punches, yet somehow makes me feel all loved and accepted while doing that.

She is fun!  I signed us up for belly dance classes 15 years ago, then told her about it, and she was all in.  I knew she would be.  She is one of the most adventurous people I know.

I would have married her 20 years ago, but for the whole Y chromosome thing.

Happy birthday, Tracy!  I will love you always and forever!

Big Jobs

Given my odd work hours, I see Reina almost every day.  Today, I ran into Steve sweeping the walk outside my office.  We chatted a bit as he went over everything they are doing to spiff up our historic building, including removing the massive spider webs that had been created over the course of the last year all the way up the north wall.

I said, "Thanks for all your work making this place look so awesome! I mean, Reina takes good care of us, but this is a big job!"

He absolutely beamed.

It doesn't take much to say thank you to the folks who clean up our messes. I realized early on that since they work on off hours, they rarely run into people -and when they do, it is for a complaint.  Just a simple thank you means a lot because they never, ever hear it.

Last fall we gave Reina a picture of all of us and we all signed it and said thank you.  She has it hanging up in her workspace and I'm pretty sure she thanked each of us individually for that small gift.

Don't we all love hearing a word or two of gratitude?

Darkling Plain

"Dover Beach" is one of my favorite poems... the language is rich and vast and captures the sense of the futility of human action perfectly.

...
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
...

This is the human world in which we live.  At the same time someone is awed by the beauty of the majestic mountains, a small child somewhere has been killed by her mom.  Land of dreams... various... beautiful.. new... really has no joy or love or light or help for pain.

When the struggle and flight has gone on too long, or when we are somehow swept up in the confusion of clashing enemies... we seek that One Person with whom we can be Real and True, and who can be Real and True with us.

It is SO TEMPTING to try to find that certitude in another human being, but being frail, no simple humans can avoid the inevitable clashing that occurs no matter how much love is involved.

So, once again I am reminded that my only real joy, love, light, certitude, peace, and help for pain come from the One who suffered and died for me.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)