On a hot, bright Wednesday in June, the
undulating hills of southeast Kansas spread out before me. Turning west from 75 to 166, I was on the
familiar stretch that used to start my journey to Colby, Kansas from
Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Prairie
tallgrasses bent and swayed in the wind.
Hawks swooped above the highway.
Wooded hills outlined the horizon.
I drove in silence except for the occasional praise song that burst from
my lips. God’s creation, this mix of
wild and tamed land, always sends my heart soaring.
Excitement built when I turned north
on Highway 15, a road previously untraveled by me. Dexter, Kansas was only a few miles distant,
and the prospect of seeing Lori for the first time in ten years and meeting her
husband of two years propelled me forward.
Lori and I go back to the fall of
1989 when we both started teaching at Colby Community College. That year there was an unprecedented nineteen
new faculty. What I did not know at the
time was that she would become my closest friend in Colby, though we only saw
each other sporadically. We rarely ran
into each other on campus due to different schedules and different
departments: she taught in the
Veterinary Technician program, and I taught in the English Department. Our friendship by phone, which for many years
meant daily conversations, kept me going during lonely, lean years of single
parenting. In 2007, she left Colby for a
new career in Topeka. In 2008, I left
Colby to become my mother’s caregiver in Greenbank, Washington.
I overshot my turn and thus got to
see all of downtown Dexter, population 300.
Main Street took me straight through town, and it wasn’t long before I
saw a lone house surrounded by fields. I
had arrived.
What do you do when you meet up with
a friend after ten years of life-changing
events? Well, you catch up, and
the years disappear as the catching-up begins.
It hardly took a moment for me to recognize a new settled peace in
Lori’s life, a deep gratitude, and a profound joy. When her husband came in from the fields for
lunch, I understood what she had been telling me. Bob is one of those rare people whose
goodness simply shines from his face: no
pretense, all authentic goodwill. I
loved the ease of conversation with no subtexts to hint of stress or
unforgiveness or dissatisfaction.
Instead, there was an abundance of mutuality, respect, and
kindness. In a word, love.
Late in the afternoon as I drove
home, my heart was filled with gratitude and joy for Lori and Bob. The peaceful rolling hills of dazzling green
set against the bright blue sky somehow summed up the beauty of their life
together. God is good. All the time.
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