Being your Barnabas again...regarding change

I'm thinking back over your musings, my love, about God running you on a treadmill of perpetual change. You're right in one respect...the circumstances of life have not afforded you much continuity. I know you worry about how you now pull us in tow with you as you navigate change after change. But I also look at what your friend writes to you in response to your latest blog on this topic...how those words along with his request that you officiate his wedding are evidence of what you have as a counterbalance to all the change in your circumstances.

Your life also has its areas of profound continuity: in the world of your relationships. Even where there was one great breach--with your firstborn, you are making headway toward repair. And in many places, minor breaches have not changed your relationships at all...no matter how much "life" tries to take this gift of relationship continuity away from you, your foundation remains unmoved.

It may not be a thing you notice, because it is so much a part of your life and alway has been; but I notice it. I could spend the rest of this blog becoming self-pitying, making a teeth-gritting dissection of my own numerous losses in this area, but I'll try to keep it illustratively brief. You see, I am the living antithesis of this gift of yours. Whereas your mother calls every week on Saturday morning, my dad doesn't even remember my birthday half the time; and this not due to lack of love, but simply due to his temperment.

But moving outside the example of family, look at my history of ongoing contact with friends from my youth. While your childhood friends are a palpable presence in your life, my two friends that I'd say really cared about me as something other than a commodity, these two are completely lost to me. One became a farm-wife without ever going to college. When I visited her some 10 years after high school, she was tired and bitter, and I--even in my position as a divorcee with all the failure that broadcasts--represented the life she'd skipped, to her deep and hopeless regret--so I was literally painful for her to see.

And then there is my dearest friend, Francie: she who is ever lost to me. Absorbed into a cult. You know how she wrote me off entirely when I didn't embrace her elitist religion. The one time you actually met her she had her newborn baby with her. She was so surprised that I knew the scriptural reference she used in naming her child. She assumed it to be far too obscure a reference for someone on the "outside" like me to catch. But the name Caleb is not that obscure a reference in my opinion. To me, the only obscurity was in her new perception of me. She was just so sure that I'd never have the understanding to relate to her now that she was so much more knowledgeable in the Way. That was what...8 years ago? Not a word since; not even when I contacted her mom and said I'd love to hear from her.

You're right, I could contact my old boyfriend...he'd love to hear from me. In fact, a couple of years ago when I ran into him in Carbondale with my sister, he made the comment to me, "Don't stay away so long!" But his common-law wife is not even comfortable with the fact that he is still close friends with my sister (who he considers like his own little sister) so how would she handle me showing up saying, "Gee, I miss contact with my old friends."

Besides, even if I repaired all the breaches, it would be too late for what I'm talking about here. The continuity for me has been broken on every line. "Catching up" could happen, but the presumed conclusion to that catching up would be more long years of silence. A sudden resurgence of involvement would be unlikely.

As for my adult life, many friends have popped up over the years who quickly grow to be very close and even somewhat reliant on my heart and soul and mind and who offer me a similar support; but only for a brief season, never in that way that walks through the years and abides.

Brief seasons of companionship have always been the norm for me. Only you and God have afforded me continuing interest...which, as an aside, I think may be part of why I may have seemed to recoil at the idea of you being heavily involved in daily life again, because it broke the mold. I feel quite normal running a script where people appear in my life with overpowering presence, but prove transient, disappearing before I lose my subtle "essence" to their more pungent ones. By having the strong personality you have and then taking jobs that always kept you at a distance, you artfully ran the script I know so well, but now you are changing the last act, which simply means that it is time for me to grow, too. Time for me to say I won't be lost in your shadow. How do I make you understand this? You have a strong personality; one that is not overcome by others--the closest you could come to understanding this, I'd expect is your relativity through your relationship with your ex-wife, through and after that marriage. Imagine that type of "surprise capture, bondage and escape" being a common life-theme, and you'll see a little deeper into my relationship history. You'll see why I look for continuity in things like land and heirlooms, seeing the same tree and flower bed every year instead of longing for the continuity you have: by seeing the same people. But still, your talk of "coming home again for good" makes me think of these things...makes me face my weakness, so I thank you for that. But it all leads back to the idea of this gift I want to remind you is yours...like the last one hidden under the back branches of the Christmas tree, almost forgotten. Here it is:

Imagine if your friends had gone the way mine did. Imagine if your parents really didn't call every Saturday, but only quarterly, and generally only if you called first and left a message saying please call. (smile) This is a tremendous gift you have been given: John, Doug, Robert, Tad...all of them more than memories...all of them living lives full of contemporary details that you know, despite the fact that you don't haunt the same neighborhoods anymore. All of them people who didn't have to stay in touch just due to blood connection. Their continuing contact makes them a true testament to the value of simply knowing you.

To me, that is one of the best examples of changelessness that a person can receive in this lifetime. It is a gift from God. So I'd say don't be afraid of the changes that do come and don't be discouraged, just pull out that treasure box of attentive friends and family and be consoled by their abiding presence; then you can tell me to get over my maudlin self, and we can start shopping for something to replace your company cell phone.