Back in November 2009, I went through a bad time. I didn’t know God then, but as I lay in the floor of my daughter’s bedroom (she wasn’t home), sobbing in my hands, talking about divorce, I heaved through tears the phrase “I have to call Amy”.
Amy? I wouldn’t have known Amy if I’d fallen over her. I couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup. She was the wife of a guy whose brother I’d dated for five months my freshman year of college. Yes, that removed. And while the brother and I had remained friends over the years, I never had met his wife, and I hadn’t even seen him in years. And yet there I was…sobbing on the floor, facing the wreckage, only to feel someone, something, say “I need to call Amy”.
She had to have been bewildered; I didn’t have her number, though we had Facebooked a few times (you know, the casual “Hey, we should meet up one day”) that lasts for years. So Thanksgiving weekend, I sent her a message that my marriage had fallen apart, and all I knew was that I needed her. And that was it. And she jumped in. In retrospect, can you imagine how horrifying that must have been?
And since that day, she has been my best friend. She didn’t magically weave my marriage back together, but she introduced me to the person that could; God. And slowly, we built it back. We’ve had setbacks; some we saw coming, some we didn’t. She introduced me to a host of women that did something that I had never seen before; listen without judgment. Help, without expectation. Be real, without repurcussions. Conversations weren’t always easy, but they were always right, and that’s what mattered.
So this study I’m in is called For Women Only, and it’s about what God wants as our role as wives. And me? I’m loud and opinionated and this does not come easy in my personality. And sometimes I find it impossible to relate biblical stuff to real life. You know, all that stuff is great, but then the dinner is buzzing and one kid needs to go to practice and the other is all PUT ELMO ON AGAIN OR I WILL CUT YOU and you think “living this out is just impossible with all the demands on me”.
And so I read Day 5 today, and this is what I read:
…the wife who studies this passage “will find that God has designed her to be a responder to her husband’s love; one prepared to help, who can gracefully adapt to her husband’s calling in life; who possesses the beauty of a gentle, quiet spirit as she respects and affirms her her husband; and who continues to delight him all through his life. This is what he needs from her.”
And I thought of my dear friend Amy. And how she makes this passage that would otherwise seem ridiculous and she lives it and exemplifies it so I can’t make excuses on why I can’t. She embodies it and makes it real to me; that this isn’t something that was really only relevant in whatever year it was written (look, I’m not that well versed yet, give me some time), but instead that it is relevant now. And I can’t imagine it’s easy; she has three young sons!
And what a great gift that is. I hope, in your circle of friends, that you have someone like that. And if you don’t, that maybe you can be that person.
My Amy <3
So I thank you, Amy; for being the person that helped bring me to God, and for surrounding me with all these women that I could pick up the phone and call and they’d be there, no questions asked, no judgment cast, within seconds. Thank you for living this out, and for being the example that you’ll never truly understand you are.
