friends
Chicken and Friends and Eternity
We were at Chick-fil-A a couple of weeks ago for Cow Appreciation day when we ran into some friends we hadn’t seen in a while. Well, friends might be a little strong - is there a term for people who you know you’d love if you only had the time to get to know them better?
We met Aaron and Beth at least a decade ago through a mutual friend. He is a pastor, she the stay-at-home mom caring for five (now soon to be six!) kids. We enjoyed our visits - usually at the home of that mutual friend - and would run into each other at the occasional church softball game or local concert.
Each time we’d run in to them and visit for a few minutes, I was impressed with how quickly the conversation gained substance. Beth and my wife could be talking for no more than 3 minutes and be deep into something about parenting or homeschooling or marriage, always in the vein of “how’s it going?” and “what are you learning?”.
Four years ago I hit a crisis point in my church/ministry life and desperately needed some outside guidance. I had no idea who to talk to, since all of my contacts were at my church, and far too close to the situation I was dealing with. So my wife suggested I talk to Aaron.
The man had no responsibility to me - I didn’t attend his church, didn’t even know him that well - and yet he made time to sit down for lunch with me, listened to my story for 45 minutes, and offered some very wise counsel. After we left that church, we visited Aaron’s church a few times, but ended up landing somewhere else. I still feel like I’ve never thanked him properly for that bit of free-agent pastoral care that I so desperately needed.
When we met at Chick-Fil-A the other night the conversation was a little bit awkward. I had kids to keep track of, he was ready to get in line to order before the line got too long, so we tripped over the standard “how’s things?”, “Busy, but good”, and “wow, the kids are getting big”. I don’t think either of our hearts were in it, but the long time between visits and the short time available to talk kept us from breaking the boundary into truly meaningful conversation.
You hear people talk from time to time about who they want to talk to when they get to heaven. The musicians talk about getting to know King David. The rhetoriticians want to talk to the Apostle Paul. Kids want to talk to Noah to find out what it was like on the ark with all of those smelly animals. But I’ve never really had anybody on that list. Fact is, I don’t ask lots of questions - I tend to just observe and absorb when I’m around people. I’d get tongue-tied if I had to sit at Timothy’s feet and ask what it was like to lead the early church. Even in the imaginative sense it seems like it’d be really uncomfortable.
Now, I’m not entirely sure that the life eternal will consist of us sitting around and getting to know our heroes - though I wouldn’t be surprised if we had that opportunity - but if it does, it’ll take this musician a while to warm up to the idea of getting to know J. S. Bach or G. F. Handel or even my recent hero Richard Wayne Mullins. But hey, it’s eternity, right? They can wait.
Sometime earlier in there, though, I’d like to take a decade or two really getting to know Aaron and Beth.
I didn't know you would be /you/
Karibeth Baumann has spent November blogging letters to her young son Atticus. She finishes up today with a beautiful summary that captures something of the revelation that parenting is:
A few years ago, I was hanging out with some other women who were doing the thing where they complain about their husbands. Afterwards, one of them said to me that she noticed that I don’t complain about your dad. Which is true. I don’t talk about him dismissively or roll my eyes at him (except maybe when he makes a terrible joke). I enjoy spending time with him, and I try to take an interest in things that are important to him.
But for some reason, Atticus, I didn’t realize that I would feel the same way about you. I thought you would be a kid, and I am not so interested in kids. I am sorry, sweet boy, that I wasn’t more excited about you joining our family. I didn’t know you would be a person. I didn’t know you would be you. If I had known how bright and funny and wild you were going to be, I would have been so much more excited to meet you.
I have a friend who, every time that we were expecting a child, would say “I can’t wait to meet him/her”. The first time I heard it, it sounded a little weird to me. But getting to know the amazing people that your children already are is one of the great unexpected (at least to me) joys of parenting.
Kari’s whole month of letters is well worth the read.
Thanks, G.
My friend Geof has been writing a series of “letters” blog posts this month, addressed to family and friends. I’ll admit to idly wondering whether I’d rate a letter or not, but when I saw “Dear Chris” show up in my RSS reader, and then read his post, I was a little bit challenged to know what to say.
One of these days I’m going to return the favor and distill my thoughts into a letter/blog post for Geof, but for now I’ll just say that I’m blessed to be able to count him as a friend, and that I wish there was a way we could merge the awesomeness that is Geof’s Huntsville, AL, crowd with my Iowa-based career path.
There are no chapter titles
I think it really hit me when I saw the dirt bike. I hadn’t seen that dirt bike in years, but I remembered the story behind it. It had been bought cheap, fixed up in a garage, and when finally complete, was brought to a party at a friends' house in the country. The owner rode it first, then handed the helmet to my wife. She proceeded to take it on a loop of the property, then lost control and ended up riding the thing directly into the corner of a limestone barn. Becky recovered within a couple of weeks from her spill, but when I saw the dirt bike sitting out waiting to be loaded into a moving trunk on Monday afternoon, I realized it had set for the last seven years with a bent rim waiting to be repaired.
On one hand you could say “come on, a bent rim, that’s an easy fix, why has it taken so long to fix it?”, and you’d be right. But having been friends with the owners of that bike for the past ten years, I know the stories of how life has intervened. Her chronic illness. His serious infection that cost him the vision in one eye. (No small thing for a pilot!) The business start-up. Later, the provision of a flying job. (Can you believe they let a one-eyed pilot fly 747s? I can.) The births of two delightful children. The struggles and joys of families, friends, church. I can very well understand why that dirt bike still has a bent rim. (On a side note: I wonder what projects I have sitting in the garage that still need completed…)
Monday afternoon I helped load the contents of these friends' house into a long moving van. Assuming all went well yesterday, they drove the eight hours and arrived in Indiana where they are moving to be closer to family. With his gone-17-days-at-a-time work schedule, it makes sense for them, but we still hate to see them go.
Life has chapters, but there are no chapter titles. We can only turn the pages and see where this next chapter takes us. I look forward to an upcoming chapter that sees us visiting those friends in Indiana, and I have only one request for them: once you get the bike fixed, let somebody other than my wife ride it first.
Canadian Travels and Weird Internet Friends
This week business took me on my second-ever cross-the-border trip, once again to Canada, though this time to a part of Canada (Toronto) that felt much less alien then last time (Montreal). Something about them still speaking English in Ontario makes it a little more comfortable.
Anyhow, there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing as we sandwiched a day of customer meetings and round-trip travel into a 48-hour window, but I did get the chance to finally meet, in person, some “weird internet friends”: Dan, Laura, and Wally. First, a little photographic evidence, then, the narrative.
Dan and Laura:
Wally, Dan, and me:
It should come as no real surprise by now to anyone that reads this blog that I have a group of “weird internet friends”. We’ve had some visit in our home, and met up with others in Minneapolis, Nashville, Lincoln, and Charlotte. Each time I’ve found them to be decent, enjoyable people, and we’ve had great times visiting. I had a little extra anticipation this time, though; Dan and I had hit it off so well online that I figured our in-person meeting would either be brilliant or amazingly awkward.
This meeting fell into the brilliant category. Without minimizing my enjoyment of Wally’s company at all, I have to say that Dan and Laura felt less like new acquaintances and more like long-lost family. We had a fantastic time visiting, eating dinner, and drinking coffee far too late into the evening.
While it is a nearly 12-hour drive from Toronto to Cedar Rapids, I extended the invitation to Dan and Laura that I’d extend to any of my weird internet friends (and you know who you are) - any time you have a long weekend and want to come visit, we have a spare bedroom, an expandable dining room table, and all the excitement of Eastern Iowa for you to enjoy on your visit. Hope to see you soon.
A fun evening, a late night, and musical kinship
I’ll work through that title backwards. How do you know when you have some musical kinship with someone else? How about when they pull out that obscure song that they really like and want you to hear… and it’s a song you’ve been playing on repeat on your iPod for weeks?
That very thing happened last night at Nick and Allie’s house. After the Iowa Songwriter’s Guild house show I hung out for a while to hear some of Allie’s new hymntunes and to generally talk music with Nick, and he pulled out The Khrusty Brothers' Sympathy for Jesus. What a great song. That provoked a discussion on Don Chaffer and Waterdeep, and ended up with Nick lending me all of his Waterdeep CDs so I can take a listen. So far, so good.
Earlier in the evening Nick & Allie hosted the Iowa Songwriters' Guild monthly meeting, which this month was a special house show. Each of the writers played a couple of songs, and I quite enjoyed hearing folks share their talent. I was motivated to try to dust off my long-neglected songwriting chops; what remains to be seen is if that motivation will last long enough to actually write anything. Nick did send a book on songwriting home with me, though, so I’ll have to take a look at it. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Good friends say things like this
Good friends aren’t afraid to say hard things.
Last night I had a friend tell me: “Hey, Chris, this church search blog thing is cool, but you need to get your butt in gear and actually get to church.”
Now, he and I both understand that we’ve had good reasons for not getting to church the past two weeks, and his comment was somewhat in jest, but still, that’s the kind of thing a reliable friend will tell you. I’m blessed to have a friend like that.
Chance Meetings with Friends
It has been a nice morning thus far. I got up at my usual early hour, got motivated enough to go run (woohoo! it feels good.) and then decided somewhat on a whim (and also influenced by the absence of any milk in the house for my cereal) to go grab a light breakfast at the little restaurant in the Hy-Vee grocery store. I took my Bible along to read a little, and figured it’d be a nice way to get the morning started.
Not two minutes after I walked in, Sam walked in behind me. He and I used to have breakfast there on a regular basis, but my busy schedule put an end to that a couple of months ago. So it was really serendipitous this morning to have him show up and join me for breakfast. We got to chat for a bit, mostly about work and stuff, but still just good to catch up.
So Lord, I hope You’re not too put off that I didn’t read like I was planning to; that one Psalm was good stuff, though. I will assume that You decided it was more important that I visit with Sam this morning. And I’m OK with that. Thanks.