The Everyday Miracle of Friends

This is not how I planned to launch this substack. I have been working to create this space, to make it a welcoming home for you who find yourself here. I had planned to officially launch it in mid-October.

But on Saturday, October 12th, I found out my middle brother had died unexpectedly, and well, best laid plans and all that. I wasn’t familiar with the full quote or how it ended, so I looked it up. It’s a misquote of a line in Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse.” The actual line goes like this:

”The best laid schemes of mice and men,

go oft awry,

And leave us not but grief and pain

for promised joy.”

Grief and pain indeed.

I won’t spend a lot of time yet talking about the grief. It’s still rather fresh, and feels too private. Perhaps I will one day, but not today.

Today I want to talk about my friends and how they showed up in a way that has left me stunned and thankful.

I wrote some about this in my upcoming book Closer Than A Brother.* About how friends show up in hard seasons with service, and presence, and meals. I’ve often been on the giving side of that equation in many ways, but this was a season where I had nothing to give. Not an ounce. And people showed up for me anyway.

I was in Chicago when I got the call, I wouldn’t fly home until the following day. I only texted one person, not ready to face the reality, but very much needing someone else to know. As I boarded the plane home the next evening, I texted her again, and asked her to do what felt impossible for me. I asked her to share the news to people so I didn’t have to. The idea of having to say or write it over and over again, it felt unbearable. I felt bad asking her to do this, something so personal and heavy, but I also knew I didn’t have the capacity to do it. She graciously accepted and I turned my phone on airplane mode, finally allowing myself to fall apart.

I arrived home to flowers from her and from my roommates. I crawled into bed, staring at those blooms, clinging to beauty, and let the tears stream as I fell asleep.

The next day another friend of mine, one who knows all too well the grief of losing a sibling, quietly opened my door with another bouquet of flowers and her own tears she mingled with mine. She sat on my bed with me in the dark and we talked about her recent vacation, about the food in Chicago, and about nothing in particular, and she let that be ok. Later, the friend who had shared the news for me started a meal train so I wouldn’t have to think about meal prepping for the next two weeks and the meals poured in. I confessed to my therapist that week that I felt guilty receiving so much care. I was wrestling grief, yes, but I wasn’t catatonic, I could make myself a sandwich, to which she gently and kindly reminded me that I would want to do the same for my friends, and that just because we can doesn’t mean we need to or should. That I should receive the meals with gladness and without shame because, despite my bravado, I very much needed the care.

I think that’s what it comes down to. Grief has no pattern, no standard to meet. In the throes of it, we truthfully don’t know what we need, but we can sense that we need care. And care is what I received, in abundance. Friends prayed over me, held me while I cried, sat with me in silence, allowed me to laugh if I felt like it or cry if I needed to. They cared for my family, too, sending meals and care packages when I went to spend the following weekend with my family as a sort of vigil.

It would have been very easy for me to feel like God was not in my sadness, that He had abandoned us by letting this awful thing happen. But in the midst of the worst days, there were His hands and His feet, making meals, bringing flowers, going on walks with me, sitting next to me on the couch and watching mindless movies, bringing me my favorite treats and letting the tears splash on their sleeves. The Holy Spirit within my people being a tangible form I could reach out and and grab hold of.

They kept me afloat in the graces of Jesus amidst the river of grief*. They still do. Friends are an everyday miracle. They are the angel baking bread as we nap under the broom tree, the arms lowering us through the ceiling for healing. They are the tears of Jesus, weeping at the tomb of our brother, knowing full well that resurrection is on the way.

*Closer than a Brother will be released in Spring 2025. If I hadn’t already turned in the final manuscript, I would spend pages writing about the goodness of these people in this circumstance.

*The “river of grief” is written about in The Deep Down Things, written by Seth and Amber Haines. It is an incredible read and one I highly recommend.