The Change

It has been said you cannot change a person. But people do change. Heaven knows we did.

Three weeks before I left for San Jose you and I embraced, salvaging what I had been certain could not be salvaged. But as Jane Austen said, “I have no gift for certainty.”

You promised to write. I promised not to be mad when you didn’t. Eighteen months is a long time to correspond through letter. You keeping in touch by snail mail was as plausible as me dancing with rhythm . Completely hopeless.

But I give credit where it is due. Three letters in eighteen months deserves a vigorous applause. Still, I wish it had been four letters. Still, there was a bit of news I wished I had received from you verses someone else.

The day I read that letter was horrible. I locked myself in the bathroom for nearly fifteen minutes just to gain composure. How I wanted to phone you, knowing I couldn’t! My only option was to hurt silently and “throw myself into the work”. I did this successfully, and prayed an awful lot for forgiveness of my bitterness, and a reminder that while I can choose the course of my life, I cannot choose yours.

When I parted San Jose, leaving people and places intimately now dear to my heart, the pain and disappointment about you was gone. I know that God answers prayers, and He undoubtedly answered mine by reassuring my heart with warmth and gladness. Our lives did not turn out as planned, but they turned out.

The twelve months after I had received the initial letter relating the whole mess (Was it really considered such then?) about you and him and what was to come, is when I changed. I can give credit to no one thing or person for this change, except to the Lord, and it was an awesome feeling to pick up that little baby of yours and give him bunches of kisses.

We still walk different paths, I think. But we should never not be friends.

You said once to me, “God knew he couldn’t make us sisters, so He had us become best friends.”

I am no one to argue with God.