Making friends and having fun

This picture was taken this past November at our Friendsgiving dinner, an annual tradition with these friends. We have years-worth of nearly identical pictures (usually with at least one of the four of us girls in various stages of pregnancy, but always with either soup or my carnitas and one of Caroline’s legendary desserts on our plates). 

As I looked through pictures of us all over the years the other night, I had the heart-rending realization that with the recent loss of our friend Chaz, the nine of us won’t be together like that again until the table is set for 10, and we welcome Jesus himself in the flesh to sit with us (still with soup or carnitas and dessert by Caroline on our plates). It utterly breaks my heart, and also compels me to whisper “Hallelujah” at the same time.

At his funeral a few weeks ago, Chaz’s nine-year-old daughter courageously read aloud through tears a letter she wrote to her Daddy. Have you ever heard 800 people cry and gasp and groan in unison for God to set all things right (whether they would have recognized that’s what they were doing or not), to make everything sad untrue? I have. I have, and I’ll never forget it. 

Something his daughter said has stuck with me these past weeks, and has been such a surprising source of comfort. She said to him in her letter: “I hope you’re having fun, and making lots of friends.” I imagine this is something he said to her dozens of times. I am in tears again just remembering it. 

I’ve really been touched by the simplicity and tenderness and innocence and normalcy of that image. Once we are with Jesus and all this death and mourning have been met with God’s comfort, and heaven and earth have been joined finally and forever, I really do think we’ll have a lot of fun and have the joy of eternity-long, open-hearted, uncomplicated friendship. 

The kind comfortable friendship with a deep goodness that takes decades to build. We’ll have all the time in the world, after all. 

And the kind of fun that awakens our soul to deep goodness and beauty of being created by a God who is humming with life and joy, but without that familiar shadow-side of sadness that comes from knowing that these experiences can only be held for a moment in our already-but-not-yet reality. Someday we’ll see that these temporary moments of perfect joy have been lovingly carried into eternity by the everlasting hands of Christ himself, and that he makes them at home forever in his Kingdom. 

And is it any wonder? After all, we are bearing witness to the Kingdom of the one who calls himself the Life, and calls us his Friends.