Friendships and Freedom

Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to get to the point where you have to many friends. Sometimes the number seems to lessen the quality.  I’ve always been very blessed in that I’m not usually lacking in good companionship and uplifting friends that encourage and challenge me.  I have however had times that though I’m surrounded by great people that love me, I still long for the friendships where you really feel like the other person knows you.  They know your past and your quirks. They know your dreams and what you love.  I had that in my friendship with Lucy.  She challenged me...Sometimes too much, but she did challenge me.  It’s hard when a person knows you so well, and then they disappear out of your life and seem to be fine with it.  It makes it seem like you didn’t matter to them.  And I know that it’s just a part of growing up. You grow apart, you won’t always have the same friends and the same dreams.  But it still doesn’t make it any easier. 

One of my favorite parts about my friendship with Lucy was that she forced me to dream. Lucy was such a dreamer, and she didn’t understand why anyone would not want to dream for bigger and better things than where already in their lives.  Lucy always seemed to be dreaming about freedom.  Freedom from the things that held her down.  Freedom from ever ending up like her parents.  Freedom from a past of legalism that she tried desperately to run away from.  Freedom from the judgments that she felt came from everyone she knew.  But the problem with Lucy's dreams where that they never let her live in and enjoy the here and now.  She could never see the blessings right in front of her because she was to worried about how she would be a year from now.  I never want to be the kind of person that is not able to enjoy those moments in the present.  Those times when things line up so perfectly, that you can’t help but smile to God because it’s only by him that it could have happened.  When the music is in tune with the atmosphere which compliments the people you are with who say the most perfect thing that lets you for a second have a clearer glimpse of the creator.  When you can barely move because you are so scared of destroying this perfect little moment. This reminder that there is someone bigger in control and that it’s not up to me to make everything alright.  That sometimes you can just...be.

I haven’t had a real conversation with Lucy in over a year.  I tried last fall to plan a weekend reunion with her and another one of our old friends, but it ended up just being full of awkward silences and attempts to re-create past memories.  You can’t live on memories for very long.  I heard recently that Lucy was moving in with her boyfriend.  It’s hard to imagine that a person that has stood so rigidly and strongly for her beliefs in the past, has rationalized herself away from these very beliefs.  It makes me think that Lucy is probably still dreaming of that freedom instead of taking hold of it.  When we search for freedom, but try to handle it ourselves, it always seems to get away from us.  It always changes us.  We were not created to build our own freedom, but to live in it daily.  Maybe it sounds easier than it is.  But maybe it’s so easy that we refuse to see it for what it really is.  The gift of God to the children he loves.  I think sometimes we try and complicate it.  Try and skew it into a gift with expectations and rules.  But all he ever wanted from us was to love him.  He gave us this gift because he loves us, not because he’s trying to win our love.  The enemy has tried so hard to pervert the pure love of God, that it is hard for us to see it for what it really is anymore.  But we must become broken daily before our Lord.