It’s been awhile since I was up north, to Duluth and beyond. I’m going to visit today.
I worked in northern Wisconsin for 12 years as a pastor of three different parishes. I loved many of the people I served, but none more than the friend I am going to see. We have held ourselves together through teenagers (hers), a wedding (mine), work system nightmares (both), cancer, deaths and funerals, births (my children, her grandchildren) chronic health problems, educational endeavors (both of us), aging and the general pressures of time and distance. We love looking at the world together, and from quite different points of view. We are blessed to have found each other and to have remained friends for over two decades.
Who in your life is the same kind of gift of God, a similar lens through which you see yourself and the world more gracefully, more lightly than you do alone?
Give thanks to God for them. Cherish your relationship enough to go out of your way to stay connected. Oulu is out of the way. But I’ll be there, returning, remembering. More whole, more myself. Trusting the same for her.