Lessons from My Best Friend Leaving
Today my best friend left. She loaded her things into her SUV and began a 25-hour journey away to join her soon-to-be husband in Colorado. We’ve been close friends for about three years, feeling like the only grown single women in our small town. Together we’ve weathered the storms of shared tears and laughter about the day-to-day stories of life. We’ve laughed about boys, walked through break ups and edited each other’s online dating profiles. We’ve dreamed of this day, when the life she’s been waiting for will start.
As I told her goodbye today, I could barely hold the tears back when I told her how thankful I was to have been witness to the outrageous way God orchestrated her story. Each detail was so intricately woven that there could be no doubt as to the creative mastermind behind it all.
My call to bravery may look different, but it will be no less scary and challenging.
For the rest of the day I’ve struggled to hold back the tears. I am deeply touched by the bravery in my friend’s heart to pursue a new chapter even when it appeared foolish to the untrained eye. She’s dreamed her whole life of being a wife and mother. Now, as a thirty-something, that dream is finally becoming a reality.
It was only when my friend was fully willing to take a wild step and give her whole life to the pursuit of her heart’s deepest desire that it came. A couple of months before she met the one, we had a conversation about packing up and moving somewhere new. In this conversation she wistfully said she could see herself living in Colorado. Neither of us knew just how prophetic that statement would be.
As she is making the long journey to her new home, it leaves me thinking about my own life. As I hugged my friend today I knew, more clearly than I knew before, that in the same way, intricately woven details are being created in my own life. It made me wonder if my aversion to risk taking is preventing me from finding something wonderful or fully seeing the pattern of beauty and creation in my own life.
Watching her drive away and willingly take a brave, crazy step challenged me to consider that perhaps we are all called to take similar jumps. My call to bravery may look different, but it will be no less scary and challenging, and I wonder if the greatest reward comes when we take the biggest and craziest risks.