Friends for the Road

I am a couple of short days before I switch from being the intern at Nelson Covenant Church to taking up my role as member of the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada's Summer Ministry Team. I'm a big fan of long titles.

It's a time of transition for me, but also many others at my church. Many are getting ready to leave and experience what God has for them outside the city limits of Nelson. I am very excited for them. I think one of the most important things that a young person can do is expand their world outside of their hometown. Especially one like Nelson or Minnedosa. I think that expanding our horizons is a part of expanding our perspectives, which is an important component of understanding ourselves, the world and our beliefs.

I do see that for some that there is much anxiousness about this next step. I can understand that. You are heading out into the world by yourself, with no one looking over your shoulder, you have to make decisions and you are without the familiarity of what has been home. You have to make a new home somehow.

In short, it can be intimidating to leave relationships behind.

We have spent time with these folk and have invested our hearts and trust with them. They know us and we know them. Even when the relationships they are leaving behind may be toxic for them, they fear leaving it because they are about to face the intimidating task of finding familiarity with others.

I suppose I have learned over the years was that yes, you may leave people behind, but now you have the opportunity to learn more people's stories and be challenged by new ideas and find that you can offer something that you bring with you.

One of my favourite lessons I learned from Covenant Bible College (God rest it's soul) is that throughout your life, you have friends for the journey and friends for the road. Friends for the journey are those who go with us for a long time, maybe all the way through life being at our side. Friends for the road are those who we have the pleasure of having with us for a short time. Maybe a couple of years, maybe for a ten minute ride on a bus. I think we often wish that all of our high school friends or hometown friends would be our friends for the journey, but I don't think that is a realistic or healthy expectation. We put too much on ourselves to build up relationships. And it becomes distressing to consider moving onto something different. We get wrapped up with trying to keep together what you have and it may even stunt the growth of those in the group to keep one moment in stasis.

However, if we realize that most of the people in our lives are friends for the road, we can find a richer interaction. That maybe we can, even for a brief moment in time, find a deep connection to those that we meet. It would also mean that the time we have with people is significant. We don't necessarily have years and years with people, but rather maybe we only have a little while.

Now, some of you may think, "Obviously, we only have a limited time with people" but although we understand that on a surface level, I don't know if we deeply understand it. You would see it most often when someone suddenly dies and people regret not saying the things they have felt about the person or regret not fixing a broken relationship.

Similarly, when we go into public, we could be that friend for the person who needs one. That the waitress who screws up your order needs for you to overlook it, because her life is filled with pain and the last thing she needs is a stranger to tear into her when she knows she messed up. You wouldn't ream out a friend like that, would you? Or maybe you can be the one that notices the guy on the street who no one else does and give him a compliment for his sweet kicks (do people still say that?). We could be their friend for the road.

I think one of the hardest lessons that a human can learn is moving on and knowing when to. When we want to lock everything down and fit what we want, we may find that we are actually killing the memory of it. That what we want to encourage people to do is grow and growth usually means we need room to do that. Whether that is physically space or emotional space.

So my encouragement to those of you intimidated by a big life change, whether it is you that is moving on or someone else close to you who is, is to make the most of your time that you have with them now. Don't be texting other people when you're with a friend. Tell people what you need to tell them. Don't wait too long to fix a broken relationship.

If you can start seeing the value of everyone's story, if you can worry less about having your friends with you for all time, if you can see the main thrust of human relationships should be growth, then you can start finding that peace when we lose people, whether it's temporarily or permanently.

I think the best thing that comes out of being willing to grow and experience a bigger world is that you can really see who your friends for the journey are. Those individuals who you truly miss and feel on a gut level their absence. Those individuals who, when once you see them again, you can pick things up again and know they still have your back. Those individuals who you love.

"Yes, I understand that every life must end, uh huh,
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, uh huh
Oh, I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love,
Some folks just have one,
Yeah, others, they've got none, uh huh"
- "Just Breathe" from the Pearl Jam album "Backspacer"