The passing of a friend

Saturday May 9th, while walking with my friend MW, we got the call saying that a woman in our church had passed away in her sleep. This wasn't just a woman to me, I had known her for 10 years and had a complicated relationship with her, she was Nathan's bookkeeper for years, and she was a mother of 3 children under the age of 10, but she was also a friend whom I loved.



Tonight was the viewing, and Friday night is the memorial service. Nathan and I have been asked to speak. This makes me nervous, because I can't even make an announcement in church without crying. I'm going to write my thoughts of her here so that it is memorialized, and serve as a reminder of what God did in my life through her.



I remember that I heard about her before I'd actually met her. I was the church secretary, and the Pastor just told me that a couple had just moved up from Fla and wanted him to marry them. He asked only that they commit 3 months to our church, that was over ten years ago.

My first good memory of her was when I waddled into her delivery room to see her first baby. She had delivered a week before me and won our bet on who would go first. I was 10 ten days late. It was the running joke at the time about how unattractive I thought newborns were, so when I walked in her room, first thing I asked was "how did everything go?" and she gushed about everything. She said N was so beautiful as she was handing her to me, and said "you better not call my baby ugly." I said "I've got that all covered", "I tell everybody their baby is sweet, precious, small" She howled in laughter, with this great belly laugh that she was famous for.

I took her under my wing, and befriended her, and reached out to her a lot for the next couple of years, and things were good. She had the habit of hiding out in her house, and I would call to get her to go out once in a while She showed up at the coffee house one night, sopping wet and in grubby clothes. She said her husband had come into the bathroom and told her to get dressed and meet her friends for coffee. She always seemed to have fun once she showed up, it was just getting her there that was sometimes hard.

Somewhere along the way we got busy and lost touch. We only spoke in the halls of church and at different events here and there. Our relationship just cooled. It came to a head a couple of years ago, when I said something again. When we were making up she said that it drove her insane that I never got offended and that I made friends so easily. She struggled with both those areas. I apologized for not getting offended when she was mad at me, and I apologized for being her friend, and we both laughed. You see, I always liked her a lot, I just wasn't always sure she felt the same way about me.

Recently, she came back to work for Nathan and we picked up again where we had left off. We talked about everything and she caught me up on all the L family news. I asked her one day how her husband was treating her, and she said "perfect." I said "perfect," and she said "yeah, everything." I said "not many women can say that they are married to a perfect man." she said that she could claim it, so I stuck my tongue out at her and called her a showoff.

The last interaction I had with her was a divine appointment. She taught me about God's compassion and that was something that I had never really grasped. I mentioned it when I talked about our ladies retreat, but I didn't mention that it was her. After our exchange we had a long talk about stuff that she was dealing with. I gave her a homework assignment and told her I would get back with her for the answer. I missed my opportunity, because of the distraction of the court case, and that is always something I'll regret, but God did an amazing work in both of our lives.

I was arrogant all those years ago when I thought that she needed me, and I was the one giving her something, she gave me something from God that no one had ever been able to give me before. I am humbled by the treasure that was inside of her, waiting to be let out. God in his mercy let me have one more time with her, because he knew that we both needed it. We had a long history together, we each played a role in each others story.