conversations

I had a good cup of coffee the other day with one of my all-time favorite people.  When I stop to think about it, it's such a funny friendship (but life's great friendships are, more often than not, odd pairings).  I can only credit God's sense of humor with how we ended up friends.  He is, I suspect (although I can never fully know for sure, since he refuses to reveal his biological age, only his mental one), slightly older than my dad.  Me, I'm twenty-five, but have always been a bit of an old soul, and have never easily fit into my own demographic.  We have a rare brand of kindredness -- a mutual love of flip-flops, coffee, discussions about faith and culture, church survival, and all things Bono.  Somehow, it all evens out, and for about a year now we've met every so often to get caffeinated and throw words and thoughts around.  (We mark seasons of life by which particular coffee shop we were in when we had such-and-such a conversation, e.g. "Oh yeah, that was back when we were meeting at Barnes and Noble.  Has it really only been six months since we were praying for that job?").

I don't think it's a coincidence at all that God blessed me with this friendship during the year my faith was tested more than any other.

Often, you don't realize the value of a friendship until life's pathways have drawn you to separate circumstances and locales, and you suddenly realize with a pang of loss that you had it good.  This is one of those rare occurrences where I'm already aware of this friendship's value and impact -- that this particular mentor has already left a lifelong mark.  If I ever have some measure of success in this life -- outside of my family, Dan will be a big part of the answer to why.

There have been brief moments in my life -- aha! moments -- where, all of a sudden, I feel like I am with my own kind.  Most of the time, those moments have been shared with people I've never met:  Buechner.  Yancey.  Lamott.  (I think Donald Miller showed up at one point, even if he was late to the party).  Musically, I found that kinship in Nichole Nordeman.  It was like coming face to face with my own thoughts in another person (who could articulate them far better than I).  In spite of learning to make friends, in spite of having a great family who loved me, I have more often than not felt an underlying loneliness all of my life.  Hard to explain, but it didn't matter a bit if I was surrounded by people or completely on my own.  I felt the loneliness of not belonging, of not fitting in.  I think it all started my junior year of college, but when I first began to read these particular words and hear these particular songs -- for the first time, I was not alone.  These words were no substitutes for a face and a voice, but they were a beautiful glimpse.

I have since found a precious few people who are the face and the voice with the words, Dan being one of them, and I cannot help but walk away from each hour's worth of conversation with my heart full of the joy that is being known and understood (and, perhaps, loved even so).  Yesterday's conversation was just one more among many.

This past year I have been at turns cynical, bitter, angry, stand-offish, unreliable, and more than a little feisty, at least, as it relates to church world and church leaders.  Refusing to let me go, God had mercy and grace on me, and sent a friend who listened, consoled, asked questions, and listened some more, even when my answers were frustrated and ugly and not well packaged.

God double-crossed me by sending me a pastor in friend's clothing.  He sent all these qualities in the very type of person I'd learned not to trust: a ministry-type.  A pastor.  He sent me Jesus in bleach blonde hair and surfer clothes, someone who could frankly not give a rip about the title of Pastor -- being much more concerned with that of Friend.  Exactly what I needed.

I've never been more grateful.

--grasshopper