somewhere between silence & screaming

There are two times in my life when I have willingly moved the course of a friendship.  Oddly, the situations are ridiculously conflicting.

In the first, someone I trusted as a Christ-follower betrayed that trust among a group of people that grew up in the same church and same town that I did.  It was another hurt in a long line of hurts by what I had collectively labeled “the church” with as negative connotation as I could muster.  It felt shattering, and I decided I was tired of letting this so called “church” break my heart and shove me around.  I was 18, and I severed the tie with this friend through an angry text message.  While I’ve always regretted the manner in which I left things in the heat of a very angry and frustrating moment, I’ve never regretted the distancing that happened.  I can look back and see the good it did for both of us to get something so toxic and negative out of our lives.  It wasn’t our first major argument by a long shot, so it wasn’t one of these irrational, out-of-nowhere decisions.  Since then, we’ve made peace.  We’re both happy.  Are we as close as we once were?  No.  But we were close when we needed to be, when we were facing the same things, and God used us to help each other.  When the help turned to hurt and our paths split, the course of our friendship changed.  To this day, I’d still defend her.  I still wish her every sort of happiness, and I smile and laugh and cry and cringe when I think of all of the things we went through together.  She’s a beautiful person who impacted my life in a hugely positive way, even though it took time apart for the full impact of our friendship to be realized. 

This time it’s my deep love for the Church that is changing the course.  It’s more difficult this time in all honesty.  It’s not a difference in the depth of the friendship, but in the situation.  The truth I believe passionately in is clear, but everything else is murky due to the impact this friend has had on my life.  I was angry last time.  That made it easier.  I’m not angry this time.  I’m was hurt, but I’m really not anymore.  I don’t actually know what I am.  Sad, I think?  Not bitter or resentful.  A little tired.  A lot tired, actually.  I’m… and that’s it.  There is no end to that sentence.  The thing about changing the course of a friendship that I know this time is that it doesn’t mean the friendship ends.  I thought that’s what it meant last time, but it didn’t.  It doesn’t end.  The dynamics just change.  I feel at peace about the direction it has to go.  I feel at peace about the things I’ve had to say, even when they weren’t received the way I’d hoped.  So I’m…   moving forward, running towards something, to something, for something.  Sometimes I’m bounding with all abandon.  Sometimes I’m crawling through this fierce jungle of giant “UGHs” and “WHYs” and “ENOUGH ALREADYs.”  Sometimes I’m carried because I don’t know how or where or when to take the next step.  But I am moving.  And it is forward.  There’s no backward in my life anymore, and for that, I’m joyful.

It’s hard to say there’s black and white.  There’s right and there’s wrong.  There’s truth, one whole truth, and a lot of lies.  You’d think that because you love Jesus and because you know that there is black and there is white and far less gray than people like to think, that the knowledge and firm conviction in those things would make them easier to stand up for.  Nothing about that is easy.  I live in a world where most of the people I know don’t want black and white, up and down, right and wrong.   They want middle.  They want simple and customized.  I thought this too.  I wanted gray.  I justified and rationalized with every single shade of gray. 

But once you know there is black and there is white, you can’t not know anymore.  You can’t stay silent, no matter how much easier it might be or how much more “open” you may seem or how many feelings you might spare.  Because when you see a world painting itself in gray, you want to run and remind them how beautiful black and white is.  How simple that actually does make things.  How joyful it is to see clearly without these murky shades of gray. 

I’m not anti-color, but I am convinced that black and white outlines are important.  The color is all filled in with Christ.  There’s no need to cover that all up with gray.

It’s been an incredibly difficult week.  It’s time to refocus, shake it off, and keep moving forward in a world that is black and white and oh-so beautiful.