Forever Friends

Saturday morning.  Sunny with Santa Ana conditions.  Dry, warm air…a light breeze.  This late summer day I return to after the crisp cool of the East.  Five days home and I finally feel as if I’m returning to my life.  A re-entry.  Not because I necessarily want to…but because it is my reality.  It is the life that God has chosen for me. 

These last five days have brought reflection to my time away.  With friends.  With those that knew me best.  Way back then….

These days have also been interspersed with the ponderings of what I’ve become.  Who I’ve become.

Gratefully, God has given me this break away to rest.  I find that I have reached a burned-out, broken-down season in my life.  Not one that I would have chosen but nonetheless, one that I am experiencing.  If only the winter snow in my soul could be thawed by the sun of this unseasonably hot day….

It was a reunion of sorts.  This time away.  A week with a high school best friend…followed by three days…the meet-up of us five-forever-friends.  One still single, one twice divorced, three of us still married to our first.  All knowing that we possess something special.  Together and apart.  This knowing goes deep.  The secrets of our pasts.  The heartaches and heartstrings of teenage girls that have shaped us and made us the women we are.  The women we’ve become.  The safety and security we each feel as we pour out our hearts to one another about the trials and triumphs in each of our lives….

These four ladies have lived this four-year nightmare with me.  Unknowing at first…I was with them all at the first tangible sign of trouble.  At a lake house…in the East.  (In hindsight…many indications of trouble brewing…just didn’t know what they all meant…)  I received a call from Prodigal Papa that our Prodigal had been dismissed from a coveted summer internship that most likely would have led to a lucrative job offer following college graduation.  I still remember that call and the nausea that swept over me.  The call…the event…that ushered in a course correction in our Prodigal’s life.  In our lives.  In my pride I denied… “not my son…,  there must be an explanation…I’ll learn it’s all been a mistake when I return home.”  I kept that phone call a secret.  The whole week.  From these friends that I trusted.  My pride not wanting to admit the onslaught of the storm forming.  Yet to occur.  I smiled by day…lay sleepless at night.  Wanting to enjoy my friends yet consumed and preoccupied by what my subconscious ‘knew.’  The knowing that goes deep into a Mama’s bones.  A Mama may not know the ‘what’ but she just knows….

The last three years have also been marked by reunion adjustments that have been altered as a result.  Of my life.  My prodigal.  And yet these friends…. They love me.  Regardless.  In spite of.   They, too, with their life challenges.

I return home in neutral.  No better.  No worse.  Then when I left.  Still worn and weary.  Still torn and teary.  But my love-tank filled…poured into by these beautiful women.  Who let me cry.  Let me mourn.  Let me grieve.  My reality.