distance...

I think maybe I will write a book someday about long-distance friendships. I wonder if by then I'll be an authority on keeping them or on losing them... Probably both.

I'm not sure if it just feels this way right now, or if it's deja vu of so many other seasons in my life that makes me think I've had more than my share of missing people. You could say it's been my choice, I suppose – moving around too much and never staying in the same place...

Ironically, it's that moving which has brought me most of my deepest relationships. And it's that same moving that constantly threatens to take them away...

dis·tance n.
1. The extent of space between two objects or places; an intervening space.
2. The fact or condition of being apart in space; remoteness.

How long can you stay connected when the things that connect you become fewer and fewer? Perhaps that's why I find myself more and more in conversations with old friends, reminiscing and talking about the past. It's easier than the present, because our histories connect us – our present is a constant reminder that our lives are being pulled farther apart.

Are friendships – or any relationship, for that matter – a product of circumstance? Do we choose our closest friends? Do they choose us? Or does someone or something else orchestrate our crossings?

I believe the latter statement. I believe that a divinely creative mind, which sees all and knows all through a continuum we cannot understand, designs our lives as we go along, ever working things for our ultimate good. Notice I say ultimate good... not necessarily immediate good, or present good, or continual good... Life is hard. It's we who made it that way. God is busy providing ways to restore it.

Finding bridges across the distance is one.

:: "Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great." – Rainer Maria Rilke