Friendship

The Day I Celebrated my 107th Birthday

Celebration from Bing Images I am not even a half-century old, as some have come to believe—though I did celebrate my 107th birthday this year. My birthday does not fall on Leap Year. And while my memory is not completely in tact, I do recall the day I nearly doubled in age.

Remembering birthdays has never been my strong point, and it has nothing to do with old age. I don’t expect anyone but my immediate family to remember mine. Sometimes, I even forget my own birthday. So I entered it on Facebook as February 29, 1908 as a joke. That way I’d only have to celebrate once every four years, which is fine by me.

I’d forgotten all about it until I opened my account on February 28 to a timeline filled with birthday wishes—though those who really know me caught the humor behind it. After a good laugh, I thanked my well-wishers, apologized for the misunderstanding, and changed my birthday info in the account settings.

The whole thing got me thinking—how well do I really know my friends? There’s no way I could know every detail about everyone’s life, and I wouldn’t expect a small fraction of my friends to know the same about me. But those closest to me, know me—and I, them.

There are friends from different seasons of my life, all whom I love for the roles they’ve had in my life story. Some of those friends I know well, others I wish I’d had the chance to get to know better. Then there are those with whom I’ve shared the deepest valleys and the highest heights. We know each other well enough to “see into” each other. We don’t need social media to remind us the details of our lives, because we already know.

Beyond even the best of friendships, there is one who knows us better than we know ourselves. God not only knows the day we were born, he knew us before we were born. It says he knows our deepest thoughts and our unspoken desires. He sees the hidden corners of our hearts, yet loves us still. So, even if the world mistakenly believes me to be 107 years old, God counts the exact number of my days. Because true love knows.
 
“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” (Psalm 139:1-6)

True Love…KNOWS (Day 26, #50ShadesOfTrueLove)

Love and the Outcome

Heart and Hand from Bing Images It made the top headlines. A teenage girl encouraged her friend to commit suicide. Records say she had over a thousand texts to intervene, and who knows how many more phone calls and conversations. He said he was scared and didn’t want to leave his family. Even got out of the truck before the carbon monoxide took over. But she urged him to get back in. And now she’s been called before a court of law—responsible, in part, for his death.

I wonder what the outcome would have been had she chosen to be part of the solution, rather than the problem—had she chosen to intervene, for the good. And though I can’t imagine influencing someone’s suicide attempt, I can’t help but ask how my silence in certain situations has contributed to a tragic outcome. Had I intervened—would the outcome have been different? Though I may never know, at least I’d have the peace of knowing I tried.

When it comes to something like suicide, I think we’d all agree on the importance of getting involved on behalf of a friend. But in other areas—those with less immediate consequences, we often stand quietly by, watching and wondering if things would be different if we’d just speak up. Our society is built on a faulty notion of a love that doesn’t intervene. We mistakenly believe that if someone is happy doing something—however self-destructive, the loving thing to do is to keep quiet. We fear being considered narrow-minded, even hateful, for saying something that could help.

Maybe there’s constant news of shootings and mass murders and other violence because no one was loving ENOUGH to say something when it needed to be said. If we had spoken truthfully, in love, when we saw a hint of a problem—or just had that gut feeling that something wasn’t right…maybe things would be different.

When I was a teen, I flushed a loved one’s liquor down the toilet because I saw its potential to destroy them. My actions wreaked havoc, initially. But in the end, it was a wake-up call that helped contribute to the ending of a potentially destructive addiction. It’s a decision I don’t regret, no matter how hard it was at the time. As mentioned in a past blog post, we may be misunderstood in the process. But that should never stop us from intervening for the good of those we love.

True Love…INTERVENES (Day 20, #50ShadesOfTrueLove)