A Journal Entry... 1999

By Rebecca Hill

My friend is leaving the community. She and her husband are going to live in California. I was surprised at my strong reaction to their announcement. I felt devastated.

People leave the community all the time. It’s always hard, because we’ve all lived so closely, and shared a unique experience. This threw me. It got me thinking about friendship. About our friendship.

This is a friendship only community could create. She and I had nothing in common as single women. She is several years younger than I, and from a Mennonite community near Peoria. She had joined our community after high school. Apart from small-town teenage rebellion, I got the feeling she had lived a rather sheltered life. She was kind and sweet, and worked with the kids in the daycare. I was loud and opinionated, and worked with the seniors in the retirement home we were trying to get off the ground. These were folks from the streets, mostly, sick, bitter, and mentally ill. I worked long hours, trying to quiet all the voices that haunted me from my childhood, memories of abuse. Voices that told me I’d never make it. I always felt as if I was swimming upstream.

She was nice, though. It was impossible not to like her. I just didn’t take her too seriously. I never thought for an instant we’d be close one day.

I was able, finally, to stop long enough to let God in, to heal me a little. I let down some walls. I got to where I felt safe enough to fall in love. God had sent me someone gentle and kind, willing to step carefully through the minefield of my personality, my endless series of defenses. I married him.

She and my husband’s best friend were married a month later. He and my husband had known each other in Boston before they both joined the community. This guy was like me, cynical and sarcastic, with a wicked sense of humor. If he and I caught each other’s eye in a community meeting or in church, I would laugh uncontrollably. I always knew what he was thinking.

So the four of us were newlyweds together, her husband and I joking often about the two of us winding us winding up with the two nicest people in the ministry.

Soon after my marriage, a miscarriage took its toll on me and I no longer had the emotional energy for my job. I began working in the daycare with my friend. After a while it was apparent I didn’t have the emotional energy for anything. I rarely went in to work, staying in my room. If I did go in, I came home and immediately shut my door. Our attempts to get pregnant again failed. I felt guilty and angry at God.

She listened. She put up with my moods, my frequent headaches, and my self-pity. She and I had endless talks over playdough, me reciting details of my fertility treatments while we made blue and red and yellow snakes.

When I did get pregnant, we endured crisis after crisis, my health and the baby’s in constant jeopardy. She was pregnant, too. We compared notes. She was excited, I was terrified. I secretly resented her normal, healthy pregnancy, feeling cheated. She sat with me, on bed rest and in the hospital where I spent the last weeks of my pregnancy. She would come all the way across town, eight months pregnant, to sit with me. I would watch her leave, envying her freedom.

One day she wasn’t there, she had given birth the night before. She had her baby in her arms while I sat in the hospital ridiculously overdue. Typical, I thought.

I had my baby two weeks later. Only I didn’t get to hold him. I came home with empty arms, my baby in intensive care with an iffy prognosis. The next day I was sitting on my bed, staring into space, when I heard a tapping on the door. She asked shyly if she could come in.

We looked at her baby together, not saying much. I was glad she was there.

My boy eventually came home, and she was so happy for me. He was fine, a miracle from God. He was happy, too, one of those babies who never cried. He was perfect.

Her baby cried constantly. I felt lost in a happy dream, and her life was a roller coaster of sleepless nights pacing the hall. Her frustration took its toll. This wasn’t coming easy to her.

It was my turn to listen. I watched her spiraling downwards, isolating more and more. But she would talk to me, and we’d go on long, long walks. She felt frustrated by the lack of space and the noise and dirt of community. Parenthood made these things far less tolerable. I tried to listen and confront, when it seemed right. It felt strange, as if we’d switched places. Yet she was amazingly humble, willing to receive from me who had always needed to hear from her.

Slowly her postpartum funk began to lift and she gained perspective. She felt bad about her attitudes, and I could tell she was really trying. Our boys played together daily. We took a million pictures of them, at each new stage. My son adored her, like a special aunt. I pictured them growing up together.

My friend is leaving now. I know she’ll always serve God, always do right wherever she is. I would never have thought someone I had so little in common with could be part of my soul. I am left with memories, and to wonder at the way God used community to weave our lives together.