This past week has been a week of unpacking and saying hello; of meeting new people and trying to find my clothes in one of the many boxes scattered around our new home. But just the week before was a week of saying goodbye. That is the way of life; we say hello and we say goodbye. Several years ago while living and going to seminary in Kentucky, I made the deliberate decision to make friends. I made those friends even knowing that there would come a painful day of saying goodbye. Life can be filled with bittersweet memories, but I think often these are the memories that mean so much.
As I was saying goodbye in Kentucky to my spiritual mentor Reg Johnson, he commented that being a professor at seminary was difficult because he had to let go of students who had become friends. He knew that all seminary students arrive with plans to leave. He could close his life off to making new friends as a way to avoid the inevitable pain of letting go, but it would also cause his heart to grow cold. So he had made the deliberate decision to open his heart to new friends. I had been one of the people who received so richly from his experience. So I made the decision that I would also open my heart to making new friends. This is a decision that opens us up to the possibility that one day we will be hurt by saying goodbye. But it is also a decision that opens us up to the possibility of knowing friendships that leave us all the more rich.
So as I unpack boxes, put things on shelves, and hopefully find my clothes, I trust that I will make new friends here in Crockett. Friendships that grow over time spent together as we come to know each other’s strengths and each other’s flaws; friendships that grow through loving and caring for each other through good and difficult times. I believe that Reg was correct in saying that friendships start with a deliberate decision to make friends. I also believe that friendships are so worth it. For in the end, friendships are the only things that we are able to keep and to take with us.
