I have - or had, not sure any more - a wonderful group of friends. We were a group of seven women and we've known each other for about thirteen years. The last couple of years have been very hard financially for my kids and I and my friends have been so wonderfully supportive. When they found out that the last week of the month is so lean I don't eat, and that Noah doesn't eat that much, they sent groceries, grocery money. When they discovered we couldn't afford the groceries for a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast, they ordered them delivered straight to our door two years in a row. They sent Christmas presents to my children. Lovely women. Truly a blessing from God. They didn't care about our financial situation, understood that I could never repay them, and reached out to help us anyway. We would not have made it through the last two years without their kindness and generosity.
It seemed that these wonderful women would always be in my life, they were my family. But then, depression hit. I can deal with depression. It made things a little harder, moving through life was a little more difficult but I was still moving forward. Then the anxiety hit. Terrible panic attacks, paralyzing fear. I tried to talk to these wonderful friends of mine but they didn't seem to listen. I was told to look on the bright side, to stop feeling sorry for myself, to make the choice to be happy, to be stronger. I could feel their impatience with me growing. They messaged less and less. No more phone calls. I tried not to talk about how I was feeling, I understood that there were some things people didn't want to deal with, even the most wonderful, giving, loving people. After a while there was silence. No phone calls, no messages. I would check my mail every day hoping for a card, a little note that said "Hey, I love you and you are not alone. I'm thinking about you." It took a few weeks to realize the mailbox would be empty but for the bills and junk mail, that the phone was not going to ring.
I have never felt more alone in my life, and that is saying something. There has been one woman, a newer friend that I am still getting to know, that has been here for me as she can. I say as she can because she deals with many of the same issues I do: financial struggles, physical pain due to a disease or disorder (though she hasn't received a diagnosis yet but we are praying for one), depression, anxiety. She knows my darkness and sits with me in it when she can. I try to do the same for her. When my family of girlfriends abandoned me, God had someone else ready. He had laid the foundation for this two years previously when her daughter met my son at school. Eventually her character convinced my son - who had been an atheist up to that point - to come to her church. He would walk every Sunday to mass. Four miles round trip in the hot Florida sun, wearing his dress shirt and tie and not made for long walks dress shoes. One day her father found out and the rest is history. He started taking Noah to mass, became his sponsor in his RCIA class. Her mother and I started talking and we really clicked. Then things started to fall apart in my life. But God had already known what was going to happen, He had already been at work preparing.
How much time do you think God spends working in the background of our lives, building bridges over troubled waters, spreading safety nets for those times we try to fly without Him, preparing a shoulder when we need a friend? I think He spends a lot more time than we realize. I think God is always working on something, forever at His loom weaving the tapestry of our lives. We may lose sight of God but neither God nor Jesus has ever lost sight of us. The bible abounds with proof of this but I think I was most moved to believe it when I read John 17:20-26:
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
That was about me. That was about you. Even before we were born Jesus was praying for us. Even in this moment Jesus is praying for us. We don't deserve it. I am often ashamed to address Jesus in prayer, I know that some of the pain, the horror that He endured was caused by me. By my selfishness, my sins, and I have a hard time coming to Him in prayer. But Jesus will wait for me, as will God. And in the meantime, Jesus will continue to pray and God will continue to weave a foundation for me that no amount of anxiety or depression can obscure. Lupus pain and illness cannot change. Loss of family and friends cannot break it. If I have no other family, if there is not a human on this Earth that thinks of me on any day, I still have a Father and I still have a Brother and they are weaving and praying and loving me and when I am so alone on this Earth I weep, I am not alone in Creation.
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