Reflections of a Friendship
Sometimes you meet someone, by chance, and a friendship is created that withstands the test of time.
These are reflections of a friendship that answered so many prayers for me.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a little more than six months into that female “f” word, “forty” or maybe I just have nothing better to do than daydream and reflect.
Recently my thoughts have floated on a friendship from when I was 16 years old.
It was a friendship that made me grow up, made me like who I was and made me see someone in their rawest moment and come to love them.
That summer I turned sixteen wouldn’t have been one I dirtied my knees in prayer, requesting God choose me for or even one I would have wished upon my worst enemy.
It was a sad time and a lonely time where I struggled with demons and nightmares.
Looking back, I realize it was probably one of the greatest summers of my life.
It was the summer I learned to love and that love included myself.
Every day I drove to the University Hospital to visit with a young man whose fate included being paralyzed.
It happened while doing what he loved–motocross.
I watched him go from being a boy to a man.
I witnessed him learn to adapt.
I heard his deepest fears with my heart and listened to his struggle with my ears.
His laugh was intoxicating and after five weeks, hands down, he was my BEST Friend.
People close to me said he’d never amount to much.
I disagreed.
People around me perceived him to have a disability.
I didn’t see it.
For two years we bore our secrets, we shared our dreams and I was the victim of many of his pranks…like when we went four-wheeling and he told me we were stuck and I’d have to walk to get help–and..yeah.
I believed HIM.
Or when we reloaded bullets and headed to the field where he told me since I had never reloaded before I’d have to try them out because if I put too much gunpowder in them, they’d explode.
d I cluelessly, aimed, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.
He even punked me when he taught me to do a wheelie in his wheelchair, failing (accidentally on purpose) to inform me I needed to hold the wheel once I tilted back–resulting in my head hitting the overly-polished hospital floor!
In a sense, we grew up together that summer.
It was a sad and lonely time for both of us and yet together it seemed there was always something to laugh about or share.
We went our separate ways and fourteen years later met again.
For me, it was like he’d always been with me.
My heart swells with pride at all he has overcome.
He is THE most amazing man I’ve ever met.
Some might perceive him to have a disability.
Even though he can’t walk, he is truly whole.