I don’t know why I’ve
been given so many close friends.
Mathematically, the factors don’t
add up to the experienced sum. I’m not an incredibly
friendly person, quite the opposite, really. I tend to intimidate or shove a
wedge of social ineptitude between myself and fresh personalities that wander
over with an open, smiling face and outstretched palm.
Yet, somehow, people reached past Me to get to the Me who
was capable of more than just pleasantries and occasional interaction; they dug
until the unearthed a Me who could earnestly pour the affection and friendship
deserved by them onto them.
How did this even happen? It’s because I learned to
miss people.
Step back to boyhood; the concept
is raw and molten, not hardened into an island of thought at this point. Three
years old, five, or eight; I’m not entirely sure what
the age was, but I do remember the life of an army brat and the moment that
crystalized just how much I missed my perpetually exiled Dad. It could be
training one month, or a wholesale disappearance with no distinct part of the
map to put my finger on and know that he existed under my grimy nails.
I understand the reason why. Mission directives require a
certain covert covering to ensure safety, and I know he never smuggled away any
joy in knowing the cloud of uncertainty he left hanging over our heads every
time that big green kit bag started filling up with desert camo. But even
though it was only slightly more than a confused hormonal response rattling
around the limbic system of my small head, it formed a foundation of
realization over what life is with one of it’s major pieces lifted
out.
My dad was really the only lesson
given me in learning what it was to miss any person for my first decade and a
half. Moving from the drab and unimaginative military housing in one state to a
carbon copy in another left no room for another teacher on attachment and
subsequent detachment. Its only the people that can leave big enough holes in a
person to notice, not houses or streets or swimming pools down by the grocery
store. We can always recover from leaving places, but I don’t
think we’re supposed to ever really recover from parting ways
with people.
High school graduation is the first
mass tether-cutting that most people partake of in their lives, possibly the
only one. Bonds of common interests: a love for literature, a friendship forged
through something as similar as a mutually enjoyed movie; common enemies:
athletic rivals, the teacher who is impossible to beat, the very essence of the
uphill climb into higher and higher rungs of academia; common experiences: the
overwashing of wonder on inked winters nights pierced through by stars, the
synchronized heartbeats of an athletic team in practice of it’s
art form, and that one time when you and your friends did that one thing and
almost got caught.
And they all leave in May.
Either we kick and thrash and sink
our claws into the exit sign as time pulls us out of the door, or we accept the
holes shaped like our friends that were in their right place one day and moved
to a state school in West Virginia the next.
College is much the same. New people overlay the holes that
were left from high school, and they never really fit what was gone, but they
become woven into our lives just as deeply, all the while with the raw feeling
left from the last great exodus churning in the gut that sets a countdown timer
to the day the stoles fly and diplomas pull the threads once again.
Slowly, the people you know will
leave. It’s inevitable. Whether it's because of a job out of state
or a relative that needs family closer by, or the somber moment when they are
carried by those closest to them to be laid into the ground; everyone has to
leave.
If I could,
I would keep all of everyone I’ve ever cared about in
one fused sphere made from every Good and Holy moment spent with people who I
truly care about and who I know care about me. We would live every split-second
of the rest of our lives in the height of our friendship and the adventure that
is inherently stamped on a bond that solid. But what I only recently became
fully cognizant of is that this futile fantasy is something that will never be
achieved on this earth. Heaven. I was asking for Heaven unabashedly and in my
own selfish terms. And I’ve only just now stumbled across
the words that I needed to etch this thought into my mind:
Learn to Miss People.
Learn to be Missed by People.
Don’t jump to some
candy-coated conclusion before I’ve fully explained these
words, because neither of them is easy. In fact, both of them are extremely
difficult and expend just about every last drop that lays in my social energy
well when exercised. It’s a horrible, yet
beautiful postcard from the eventual heaven promised us. It takes the barely
scabbed over losses of those closest us (via moving away, loss of common ties,
or even the confusing chasm that death tears open between friends and family)
and rips the ugly mass of damaged flesh attempting to grow over the wound,
exposing all of the rotten hurt and tender nerves that still aren’t
ready to accept the separation we all experience. And then we pour salt in that
festering cut.
I miss so many people for so many
reasons. And it hurts to remember that there will never be a way to go back to
the way it was in the simpler times of days past. But the real question that we
all need to ask ourselves is “Why does this hurt?”
And the only answer I can come up with in response is: “Because
it was good.”
It was good; the same words spoken
by God over the Garden of Eden. This leads us to the final question: “Why
was it good?” Because we touched a piece of
Eden in the life of someone willing to share theirs with us, and we should pray
fervently that we allowed the same gift to in return.
Learn to Miss the People.
Learn to be Missed by People.
The pain and longing we experience
by separation from those we connected with on a deeper level can either ruin us
or it can point us to the caring, boisterous, loving, hilarious, awe-filled,
compassionate, adventurous, and overall wonderful parts of the person who used
to walk beside us. Learn to Miss People because of how they painted their
unique strokes on your life, made you better through simply existing near you,
drew you closer to heavens doors, reminded you of Eden in a way that only that
person could have.
It’s easy to guess the next
part. Be Missed by People. Leave a room emptier than it was when you were truly
alive inside of it. Leave holes in other people’s lives, not out of spite
but simply because the act of you existing beside others made them better
people, brought them closer to heaven’s doors, reminded them of
Eden in only a way that you could have.
What a terrible life it would be if no one mattered enough
to tear a hole in you when they left.
What a terrible friend you would be if you left those around
you intact when you are gone.
Christ gives us the hope that, one
day, we will all be able to sew each other back into our lives in the most
perfect tapestry ever conceived. Every past wound left by a lost friend
refilled and made Oh so much sweeter by the absence remedied. Every wound you’ve ever torn by your
leaving healed and restored to something higher and weightier and more complete
than a trip down memory lane ever promised.
Learn to Miss People.
Learn to be Missed by People.
This life isn’t worth living any other
way.
