Hideaway 2

I started taking notice of His desire for full engagement with me, through relating to Sarah.  Sarah and I met during my senior year in high school.  We were in the same graduating class, and have remained friends to this day.  I entered this senior year with a solid belief in the strictness of God’s standard of holiness.  I was countries away from my parents that year, with a younger brother to guide and a reputation to build.  I was in a new environment and was unsure whether or not I would enjoy or make anything meaningful out of those nine months of formal education.  As time passed, though, having met and befriended Sarah, my prior conceptualization of what it means to be in relationship with God underwent direct attack.

Because of her, I had to begin processing the “gray areas” of human life.  Before this, I had basically written off people who considered life to have any such facets, maybe due to what I believed to be their lack of thorough consideration of God’s Word.  Before knowing her, I was absolutely secure in the definitive distinction between what was godly and ungodly in sweeping generalizations.  When Sarah came along, my worldview was shattered.  In each of our conversations, I felt a little of what I had held on to, in terms of right and wrong, wrenched from my hands.  In all, she showed me that actual people have to face dilemmas that have not ready explanation or solution.  It is only in accepting others that I might to appreciate their struggles, and in appreciating their struggles that I could see God in ways I would have missed otherwise.

Whereas Sarah stressed an honest look at the world, Helen emphasized the necessity of frankness in authentic, thriving human relationships.  We met one evening at dinner in the cafeteria during my undergraduate years.  She was direct with me in the most shocking way that night.  “Do you want to be friends?”  she asked.  “Sure.”  I responded.  “No, I mean do you want to be honest and open with me about everything in your life, and do you want to hear everything I have to say about myself and my life, and do you want to listen even if I don’t have anything good or easy to say?  Because I don’t have time for any friendship that doesn’t mean those things.”  That was the effect of our very first conversation!  Stunned, I took a few, precious moments to seriously consider her words.  Initially, they seemed quite surprising to me, jarring to my sensibilities.  Upon further reflection, I came to realize that what Helen had done was to take the unarticulated desire I already had and to bring it to the conscious level.  How often had I thought of friendship without these explicit terms!  In the cafeteria that evening, they looked daunting and demanding.  At the same time, she had expressed exactly the kind of friendship I thought of as genuine.  With the meaning of the word clarified, Helen and I became friends that night, and have remained so.