Wow. She was only 35 and now she is gone. I knew her.. we had fun… joked around… debated. she always listened to what I would tell her about my perspective about God and faith… she would listen and take things in.

You could tell that she was a searcher. A lazy searcher perhaps, she wasn’t knocking down my door or anything but I knew she was open to a good conversation about God, and maybe open to being convinced about my take on the nature of God. I didn’t get a feeling from her that she was just passing the time or being polite in our conversations, rather the interest was in her eyes and was genuine.

It blows me away that I let this friendship linger, disintegrate even, over the last two years. Even after I found out last year that her brother died of basicly the same type of circumstances and knew that she may be heading down the same road too, still I never got a hold of her to see how she was doing, to invite her to coffee. I was the closest thing to a pastor that she probably had in her life and right or wrong I feel that I failed her.

Now she is gone and I am left with questions. Was I blind to her needs? Am I so far from God that I couldn’t see? Did I ignore God and choose not to see? Have I sinned here?

I question my commitment to the Kingdom when I see the hurting and the lost and just turn away. I think of my friend and, with the benefit of hindsight, know that she was just the type of person that needed to see the Kingdom of God at work in someone’s life. Would that have saved her life? Would that have made her passing more peaceful? Man, I don’t know.

Perhaps it is simply pride that makes me think that the impact of my life intersecting with her’s could of changed her destiny. Sometimes I think that this guilt that we Christians feel when have not done all that we could of is simple pride. When I think that I failed God when he “needed” me or that I failed my friend when she “needed” me makes me wonder about may perception of place in God’s Kingdom. The very nature of this thinking puts me so much in the center of things, makes me so necessary and integral to the end result. It makes me feel icky, just the thought of being so narcistic.

A more generous view is that I have this gift that changed my life forever inside of me. The very spirit of the living God is alive in me, overflowing my cup and spilling out onto the world around. My life is not so special rather the life that is in me is infinitely special. It is His life in me that is what is lifechanging to anyone and everyone, even for… especially for my friend. It is this life, and the love that comes with it, which I have to offer… which I feel that I have held back too often, that I feel I held back from my friend… and now she is gone.

There is a part of me that wants to wax poetic and/or pontificate deep and meaningful truths in this, my online journal. I imagine people coming from the four corners of the world, commenting on my wisdom, or even better referencing my work in a trackback. My inner megalomaniac imagines being on everyone’s blogroll and maybe even required reading for … for … hmmm, now what class could I be required reading for? Perhaps some theology class. But then comes the part of the post where I start doubting the impact and clarity of the previous three sentences, so i reread and edit them. If they are complete crap, I delete it all and start from scratch.

What was I writing about now? (reread) Oh yes, and the longer the post gets the more I have to reread, just to make sure that I am staying on target and insuring the there is a flow to the text. The more I type the less sure I become of the validity and logical strength of what I am saying and the more I worry about all the missing clarifying statements that would make my point clearer and sway the detractors. Then I think to myself, “Was that last sentence too Pauline?” You know, some of of the Apostle Paul’s epistles have sentences that go on and on. So I reread and determine that I am unable to come up with a better way to communicate my point without a major rewrite, and now I am feeling the crunch of time. I have spent way too much time on this post already, so things will just have to stand as is.

But wait, isn’t the purpose off this post to convey something of value to the imagined millions of readers? Don’t I owe the person reading this post something of consequence, something legible, something consise? After all, they are taking valuable time to read this post and I should respect that. Truth is I just do not want to look like a fool.

And spelling, I say big words all the time and don’t even think about it. But spelling is not speaking so spell checks abound. At this point I think to myself that people should not use words in conversation that they cannot spell. But this thought is problematic as I do not want to give up the word vociferous (spell checked) or picturesque (spell checked again) and for some reason their spelling just does not stick with me.

Am I still on point? (reread, edit)

As I look at the time I have wasted, a half-hour on three stupid paragraphs, I begin to wish, yet again, that I could type faster, because I don’t have time for this. Maybe I should save a draft and come back tot the text later. That isn’t going to work, I have posts in the draft folder that have been in there for 6 months.

The draft folder is a leppers’ island of malformed posts, it is where these poor creatures go to to die. Perhaps that is too harsh, I mean these posts may never see the light of day but they still have each other. They are there to comfort one another and they do not judge one another. You will never see one of these draft posts snicker at the misspellings, bad grammar choices and incompleteness of another because it knows it is just as flawed a creation.

No, the choice is either to slave away at the current post or delete it entirely. Deleting the post is a sure way of making sure that the last half-hour has been a total waste of time but even that may be perferrable to the humiliation of a poorly written post, that is being judged by all and by proxy, allowing people to judge me. Oh, the horror!

Man, narcissism sucks!