On Loving Immortals: A Challenge for a New Year

Last year we rang in the New Year with heavy hearts as we sat with a friend who had just lost his wife hours before--and tried to wrap our minds around the fact that she was really suddenly gone. As the clock changed to midnight, I remember the sadness and irony in her husband's voice as he looked up and said, "Well, Happy New Year."

And my heart was heavy not only for the loss of this friend's presence in our lives, but for the realization that I hadn't been as good a friend to her as I should have been. Our husbands knew each other from work and had become friends, and she had often mentioned wanting to spend more time together, just the two of us. I would agree and say, "Yeah, we should do that," but time would go by and I never made the effort. This may sound fairly typical. We've probably all said these things and never followed through. But once she was gone, there was an obvious finality; the thing I assumed I would have the chance to do someday was no longer a possibility. I couldn't go back and be a better friend. I couldn't listen to her tell me about the latest book she was reading, or walk through her back yard with her as she excitedly showed me what she had planted in her garden. She really wanted my friendship, but because I didn't automatically connect with her as easily as I did with other friends, I didn't pursue a deeper relationship with her. And I know I missed out.

It might sound like I'm being too hard on myself, but these are the kinds of things you think about after someone is gone. And even though these were painful thoughts to face, I am really thankful for what they produced in my heart.

With such a sad start to a new year, you might think that a shadow would have hung over it indefinitely. But, as I went into 2013 thinking about my friend, joy came as I resolved to love better. If we are friends on Facebook, you might remember these words I posted:

"I have always been a cautious person. A cautious driver. A cautious decision maker. But in 2013 I pray that I can be less cautious when it comes to loving and moving towards people. 

What will they think? Is this the right think to say/do? How do I be this person's friend when they are so different from me? Self, sometimes you just need to get over yourself.

When I'm thinking about someone, I should call them. When I see someone I know in the grocery store who I may not want to talk to, I should say hi, instead of ducking into the next aisle (come on, you know you've done it too). When I doubt whether or not it is "appropriate" to hug someone who is crying, I should just do it. 

Sometimes propriety needs to be thrown out the window. Sometimes loving means risking. Who cares about whether or not it may feel awkward. I want to go out on limbs this year. I want to embrace awkward. I want to be a little reckless. Because people are worth loving. And because looking back, it's not the "awkward" moments I'll regret. It's not the comfort-risking moments I'll regret. But I just might regret the safe ones. I don't have a laundry list of resolutions. I just want this--to love with abandon."

And you know what? I did go out on limbs this year. I did things I never would have thought to do without such a sobering commencement of 2013. I've made mistakes too, of course. I haven't always been as present in the moment with the ones I love as I ought to have been. But I think I loved more deliberately and with more risk than I ever had before. 

C.S. Lewis notes the following in The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
 
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.
We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

As I think through specific goals that I would like to accomplish in 2014, I pray that love is the overarching motivation in all that I do. To really see people as Lewis proposes. To remember that each person is a glorious and unique creation of the Living God. That there are no mere mortals. And that I must not presume upon tomorrow, assuming the chance to love will come again.

There are neighbors to be met. There is family to improve in loving. There are co-workers to know better. There are inner circles that could be widened. Tables that could have strangers gathered 'round more often. Brief interactions, people we may never see again, whose lives we can make better in some small way.

Today. Today. Let us love deeply, today.