During the past few days I have flashed back over the twenty-three years of being together with Cherry. The reflection has been wonderful, recalling the myriad of special moments that we have shared. I find my recalling stressful moments and easy ones with the same brush, usually ending up with descriptors like adventures, amazing, mysterious, wonderful, and incredible all failing to capture just what happened.
Buried in these moments are friends who made a difference. They were there for one or both of us when nobody else could make the difference. In hindsight it is clear that “reliable friends who do what they say are like cool drinks in sweltering heat—refreshing!” (Proverbs 25.13) When you are thirsty beyond imagination then the value of whatever quenches the thirst is truly priceless.
I readily remember evenings when I came home from work and needed someone there to just soothe one’s soul…Cherry was the best friend one could dream of yet even she had her days when she needed a hand. In those moments we called a friend. How can one assign a value to that experience?
I cannot forget a friend helping me retrieve a lost tire and wheel from the highway south of San Francisco in the inky blackness of a moonless night. The wreck that generated the tire was a bizarre memory yet who other than a crazy friend would have risk their life to scour the median in order to find and retrieve the broken wheel?
I laugh and cry at the other moments when friends made the difference between success and failure, happiness and despair, hope and something worse than melancholy. There was no pattern to the friends who provided the color, spice, and salt to our lives. They were old and young, wealthy and struggling to make ends meet, nurturing and willing to hold one or both of us accountable. Each in his or her way contributed something unique to the journey of our lives.
I finally see that it was God’s hands, eyes, and ears. God is in your life too.
