Sandpaper

Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer. ~ author unkown

This post is dedicated to my friend gwen :) (don't worry, I'm not planning on revealing any of your outrageous secrets.) ;)

Life makes us face a lot of challenges and puts burdens on our backs that we don't understand often enough. Sometimes we can make sense of them when looking back...and then we can gladly say yeah, I grew. And sometimes we can't. But the times that I actually understood things when looking back was mostly in relationships. In general, to be honest, it's not that rare for me that when I first meet someone, I don't appreciate them as a new enrichment of my life, I get annoyed by the differences and run to God with a big frown, asking "so..why THIS?" But I've experienced something amazing over and over, that once I begin to SEEK a person's heart actively, I start finding the most beauteous things that I feel like dusting off and keeping.. :) By now I wonder how many people I've passed by without getting to know, convinced that they had nothing to give me. In reality I probably walked past a mine of gold... So I need to believe that God's making sure I don't block off what I'm actually in need of receiving - or of giving...He knows exactly who walks into my life and whose life he puts me in..

I have a way of calling people I truly consider amazing "great humans". And I feel so unspeakably RICH to say the great humans I know just don't even fit into my heart...I have been blessed inconceivably throughout nerve-wrecking circumstances and a pretty chaotic road... Blessed with relationships that have cost me a lot and given me so much more in return.. :) I want to talk about sandpaper friends. Friends who aren't only fun to be around, but inspiring, challenging, and shaping....I don't know if you've ever rubbed your HAND against sandpaper but I guess after some time it'll hurt. I don't think that's a break to the metaphor though. I'm talking about relationships that can cause pain because you're willing to open up, because you choose to keep seeking and wrestling and ultimately loving in spite of all the odds that could make you say "you're crazy" and run off. Some weeks ago, my pastor said "If you don't have problems in your relationships, I'm wondering, what kind of relationships do you have?" I didn't need to think about that for long, I know pretty well that I have problems in my relationships, more than a lot and more than temporary ones. What he said was comforting to me (as you see, I remembered the sentence) because pain and exhaustion doesn't necessarily mean you're taking the wrong road...rather that your soul is being sanded, sanded through ache, into something beautiful. Sandpaper friends are caught in a process of changing, together with you. What's bonding you will always at the same time be what's deeply transforming you, chipping away the rough and harsh, the egoistic and the fearful, bit by bit..creating a magnificent figure from a chunk of unformed rock....

Gwen is a sandpaper friend of that sort. :) I have learned so, so much through talking to her, sharing my life with her and listening to her head and heart. Not only in terms of actually getting my grammar filed, but I've learned things that I know she didn't even intend. My horizon has been expanded not in miles, but in worlds. The more I thought I was giving, the more I actually received...

I want to encourage you all to go in search of sandpaper friends. They may not be the kind of friends you'll share bracelets and pillows and your entire life with, or maybe they will. That is the thing with friends, don't try to categorize them. You will at most recognize them by the trait that they're as different to you as they are the same. There'll be fields of constant wrestling and things on which you couldn't agree more. :) Both the gaping disagreements and the deep-rooted unity have their incomparable beauty and significance. Friends who always agree with you, who never give you the chance to fight against a current, are probably scared of you. Don't go in search of someone who'll never question you... I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better ~Plutarch. Wrestling - in whatever way it occurs - may make your head or your whole life go up in flames from time to time, it may drain your depths and fill you with entirely new ambitions. Allowing others to sand you is letting their universe, their soul virtually collide with yours. There's no chance you won't FEEL the collision, and there's no way you'll stay the same. But growing is the best thing that can happen to us.. :)

You don't need the same convictions or the same favourite colour, that's the stuff friends were made of in kindergarten. The beauty lies in learning to see beyond what you thought was normal....realizing that your normal is Jupiter for someone else. I've learned a lot about myself, come to see what I actually consist of, what I'm lacking and where I'm aching.....nothing can replace all that revelation..

Gwen you are entirely precious to me, in all the facets that you've let me see.. Over and over I stand there, marveling at the Creator's handwriting all over you. :) You are hilariously funny and profoundly deep....I admire you and try to learn from you even when it seems quite clearly out of my reach. ;) I'm happy because I know that our tug-of-wars, changing glances in silence and above all the feeling of being understood and appreciated has shaped me for all that's still to come. I owe you an enormous thank you, for so much more than just putting up with me every day of my life...for wandering off-road with me and helping me to fight the drowning waves of the system. :)) 
I'm grateful to God that I don't have to say "I miss you" yet..

A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. (:
~Lois Wyse