Talking Through Nets

I heard about Amy before I ever met her. I was going to China for the summer with a group of college students and one night, while eating fish tacos, my college mentor told me about how she had talked to her on the phone. Amy was a student at a school in New York and was involved in the same campus ministry that I was a part of, and after her mentor talked to mine, Amy somehow decided to join our missions team.

In many ways we were unlikely friends. We voted for different people in the presidential election; I often accepted the status quo, while she questioned and wasn't afraid to argue her point; I was the farthest thing from a planner, while she mapped out her days and set daily, weekly, and yearly goals. She thrived on being with people while I thrived on being alone. She had an amazing vocabulary and would say things like, “Tell me about your context,” when she was getting to know someone. And she really wanted to know people.

Our first night in China we stayed in Beijing and while the rest of our group laughed and took silly pictures in the hallways, something happened between Amy and me. She would later say that I took off my “mask." I don't even remember exactly what we talked about, but I was honest and open with her about some of my struggles and fears, and in turn, she felt the freedom to be the same with me.

We didn't choose to be roommates, but when we arrived at the city we would live in for the summer we discovered that the person we stayed with that first night was to be our roommate for the next seven weeks. So, in a room with two bunk beds and a bathroom with a “squatty potty,” as we affectionately called it, we wove the stories of our lives together. There's something about international travel and mission trips in particular. They have a way of bringing out in a person all the things that they like to keep hidden, that seem manageable back home in the comfort and familiarity of every day life. But combine jet lag, unusual foods, people who were strangers before but who you now refer to as family, language barriers, and the challenges of cross-cultural ministry, and your issues start demanding your attention like your three-year-old on the candy aisle.

One of the quirky things about our rooms at the school was that our beds were surrounded by netting, presumably to keep you from being bitten by mosquitoes while you slept, although I don't remember mosquitoes being much of a problem at night or during the day. So, at night, Amy and I would talk and pray and sometimes cry with each other through the nets separating our beds. Sometimes one of us would get very serious and say, “I feel like something's come between us, only to bust out laughing at the silliness of joke at the net's expense.

Amy said that I taught her so much about what it means to love and I think she taught me what it means to be loved. I went into that summer with heavy burdens and questions about life and while I often felt so unlovable and strange in my own skin, Amy accepted me in a way I don't think I had ever quite experienced. She saw potential and beauty where I saw only fear and failure. I felt stuck with where I was in life, and being the planner that she was, she encouraged me to write a sketch of what my ideal self would look like to help me envision what my life--what I could be like if I chose to move beyond my doubt and self-pity. When I returned home, she listened to my hopeful excitement over the phone as I shared with her about meeting a guy I thought could be the one, and she listened and cried with me when my hopes were dashed and my heart was so raw I thought the pain would never subside. She validated my feelings and patiently walked with me when I thought I was going crazy.

Amy and I lost touch. She graduated and began working for Teach America and somehow more and more time began to elapse between our phone conversations. But I still think about Amy and am inspired by her drink-the-marrorw-of-life-attitude. I think about how she questioned and wrestled with big global issues...and how she wrestled with her own. I think about how she lived with an intentionality that was new and fresh and challenging to the way I had been living. But mostly what I think about is our late-night talks through a mosquito net, our hearts being knit together, never to be exactly as they were before.

I have found that some friends are forever friends, and others are for-a-season-friends. Sometimes this is sad to me because I want to hold on to all of those precious people and precious moments. But I realize too that those moments were what propelled me into this moment and that to stay where I was before would be to live with the growing pains and never know the growth on the other side. Maybe our paths will cross again and my friendship with Amy will pick up where it left off. Or maybe we were always meant to be for-a-season-friends, both of us sent by God to call attention to His beauty in each other's broken souls, His love still echoing in the sounds of laughter, prayers, and tears.