New Years is a suspicious holiday.

People bellow for resolutions.

They play all those tricky songs…

(They being those crafty people who made up New Years.)

Their evil sing-songy lyrics interrogate me.

They ask tough questions.

Like…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?

And my mind collects my sadness for a moment.

This year I lost my first friend.

That sounds dumb, I know.

But I mean it.

Not that friendships haven’t ebbed and flowed, hit ups and downs, or been distanced by time and geography, but I’ve never straight out lost a friend. Not in my whole life.

Understatement of 2009: It bothers me.

Because its not because they died.

Or because they moved far away.

But just because we just aren’t friends anymore.

My heart. It gets sort of fragile and tingly-numb when I think about it.

I didn’t want to let go.

But you know that moment when your heart flattens like a punctured tire…and you realize that you’re positioning yourself as the pathetic one? The one who enjoys sharing life with someone whose lost the interest to share yours?

That moment came.

More than once.

I searched for the mercy of certainty.

And it was nowhere to be found. Or at least nowhere that I looked.

Or if it was, I didn’t recognize it.

So–remorsefully, unwillingly, running on empty–I let go.

And now I sit here, looking at my open hand.

With a tingly-numb heart.

Disgusted by the distance that grows up like weeds between us.

And I hope there is another way.

After all, what is the salvation message if not a story about what was once lost being found?

I smile at this thought. And I pick up my son who now does irresistible cuddly things like plunges forward into me, nuzzling his head into my chest, clutching his little fingers at me like scrapy little talons…which is the closest thing he has to a hug.

And I look at him.

And I know this is how God looks at me.

And how God looks at my friend.

And how God looks at both of us together; how he looks at the people in our lives; how he looks at all of us.

And all is well.

All is well.