"17. Have a friend"

“17. Have a friend.”

I wrote this in a journal I kept in 2011. It belonged to a somewhat cliché list of “100 Things To Do Before I Die.”

Observing myself in retrospect, I slip into a sinking hollowness. I remember exactly how I felt when I wrote that. My mom had recently moved out, my dad’s girlfriend had since moved in with her three kids, my two brothers were away at college, and I didn’t seem to fit into any equation.

At school, I had “friends”—people I sometimes talked to in class, but my painfully shy nature made human interactions physically hard for me (ask my close friends, now, this awkward, anti-social side can still blindside me at gatherings of people I don’t know well.) Think Laura Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie. If I arrived to school early, I went to my class and sat for 20 minutes alone because even the teachers were more popular than me. After school, I waited to be picked up, alone, hoping that nobody looked at me for more than 3 seconds. I went home and read my text books. I’d go to soccer practice or work out, then listened to Andrew Bird or Middle Brother for hours while looking at a map of the world, planning impossible adventures I knew my nature would never allow. No one ever really acknowledged me for more than a courteous, forced moment.

I would like to take these moments of yours, while reading this, however, not to discuss the unfortunate propensities of my younger self. Though I never attracted much in terms of relationships (my idle face defaults to a repelling scowl which probably never helped,) I was, in fact, being fervently pursued. Chased after.

One day, I was putting on my shin guards before a high school soccer game. While I was told to be “getting in the zone” for the day’s match, I couldn’t think of anything other than being home alone that weekend. For most teenagers, this would be an axiom, but for me, this meant that the guaranteed interactions I had with the people in my house would not happen and I probably wouldn’t speak a single word for two days. I was mindlessly tying and untying my cleats when an older girl on the team sat down next to me. I was immediately uncomfortable; this wasn’t supposed to happen. I couldn’t figure out why someone was purposefully sitting next to me, let alone one of the most well-liked seniors at my school. She asked me if I was okay. People didn’t usually say more than ‘hey’ to me, much less notice that something was wrong. Something even crazier happened. She asked if I wanted to hang out that weekend. Up until this point of my high school career, I could still count the number of times I had hung out with people on two hands. “Uh, sure.”

An unassuming kindness, this could have been cast off into diminutive obscurity, but it was a rallying of the Lord’s lifelong pursuit for my heart. It was more than just a popular older girl on the soccer team sitting next to me; it was Jesus, Himself, sitting next to me. He wasn’t going to let me fade into the easiness of life-long isolation and self-pity. This was only the first of a series of divine encounters.

This tiny expansion of the Kingdom of Goodness began presenting the Solution to my heart’s biggest quandary. A place where I am always wanted, where I am always listened to, where I am always loved. I soon discovered that I had much more than a friend in Jesus. There was a moment, looking into the sky and hearing the Lord in my mind’s voice, that I will never forget. He was calling me somewhere. “Welcome Home.”

*disclaimer: There are supremely more difficult things than loneliness and a broken family. I don’t mean to garner any sympathy; it’s just the type of brokenness the Lord used to draw me to Himself.

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Ephesians 2:13

What I Am Listening To:

"Going Home" -Josh Garrels

"Hazelton" -Bon Iver

"Take Me Home" -North of the New

"Missed the Boat" -Modest Mouse

"King of Spain" -The Tallest Man On Earth

"Right Me Up" -State Radio