For Good

Irie for openphoto.net

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28, NKJV).

This past July, my friend, Anne, and I met up in our hometown of International Falls, Minnesota, while we were back visiting our families.  One day towards the end of our time together, our moms watched our babies—mine, a 5-month old girl named Alice and hers, a 9-month old boy named Milo—so Anne and I could have some alone time to reconnect and revisit our old high school haunts, which included the dark, echoing, halls of the historic Backus Community Center, which, coincidentally, we’d always suspected to be haunted, the parallel, conglomerated caravans of downtown gift shops , the golf course by the river, where I used to run in the fall and she used to ski in the winter, the old-fashioned ice cream parlor in the charming lake town of Rainier, and, of course, the bright and sunny city beach we spent many a summer afternoon pedaling to on the bike trail that ran from downtown all the way out to our beloved lake.

At the beach, our most favorite spot of all, we doggy-paddled out to the floating dock side-by-side, just like old times, and jumped off of it into the glistening, dark brown lake.  As we treaded the water that felt as crisp as a cup of iced tea and tried not to think about the muskies, northern pikes, and whatever else might’ve been swimming beneath our wiggling toes, we looked out at the sandy shore of our youth and wondered aloud together whether our younger selves would’ve felt satisfied with where we we’d ended up in our lives as the twenty-nine and thirty-year-old that we now were. 

Anne stretched her arms out wide and grinned at me through her dark prescription sunglasses as she confidently asserted that High School Anne and High School Loni would indeed be pleased.  Always quick to recognize the positive things in life, she effortlessly rattled off handfuls of highlights from the past eleven years, like completing college, marrying our husbands, and having our first children.  She also identified her foray into the field of social work and my first published piece of writing as particularly gratifying personal victories. 

It was true—we’d made noted progress on some of the life goals we’d drawn up for ourselves before college.  Anne had waded into the world of international missions and vacationed in exotic places, like Belize and Ireland, and I had worked diligently to cross house parenting and seeing a professional counselor off my own list.  As Anne also pointed out, the years had been riddled with challenges as well.  House parenting wasn’t exactly easy for me, and neither was mission work for Anne.  We’d both experienced our fair share of confusion, pain, and loss over the years, just like anyone else.  We’d gone through fruitless job searches, the confrontation of deep-seated scars, seasons of intense loneliness, and the deaths of loved ones.   

I was especially feeling that last one.  My former step-father had passed away just the week before, and even though his health had been deteriorating for years, I hadn’t expected it.  He and I had maintained a close relationship in the years since the divorce, and I missed him.  Even as Anne and I had giggled through the spooky upper level of Backus, tried on hats at the girly gift shop, and now swam with our arms temporarily free of the weight of our wee ones, I felt strained and short-changed, tired and tender, with the remnants of salty tears still stinging my sunburned skin.  I was trying so hard to enjoy my last few days with the friends and family I rarely got to see, but at the price of holding back grief.

In spite of my present sorrow, I still agreed with Anne that life had been good—that it was all good in some cosmically complex way that only God could arrange.  I could feel His steadying embrace as I dunked my head underwater, rubbed away the sticky tears, and spun around in a circle, soaking it all in—the sparkling water, the trees, the sadness. 

We decided to swim further out to the buoys before heading back to shore, and as we swam, a pair of heads, shoulders, and arms bobbing above the waves, I said to my pal, “And can’t you just see us here, in this same spot, in another five years?  Just imagine what kinds of things we’ll be looking back upon then.” 

Anne was quiet for a moment.  In fact, I don’t remember her ever answering the question.  Perhaps it was because she, like me, was quietly considering what the future held—what other kinds of surprises would dwell beneath the surface of these unchartered waters. 

We floated next to one of the buoys for several minutes, suspended in that static space between the beach and the banks of Fort Francis, Ontario—bordered by our past and future.  I felt something like Tim O’Brien in his chilling short story, On the Rainy River, except this experience wasn’t chilling—excluding the temperature of the water, anyway.   

As we turned back to return to our awaiting babies, to our husbands and our hobbies and our business back home, I felt a stirring sense of peace inside of me in spite of the uncertainty, because I really did—I knew it would be good.

And it is.