The Friend I Never Met In Person
I never met May in person. We were friends through Skype. When she passed away in December, AJ was the one who told me. This is what virtual friendship taught me about heaven.
It is late tonight. I am thinking about May.
I never met May in person.
We were friends through Skype. Just video calls and chats. Many times we cried together on those calls. The conversations were deep. The conversations were painful. Life was heavy.
Most of the time I was the one crying. I was always in the hospital. There was always something.
I asked her once, “Can I call you?”
She answered, “Yes. But I cry more on calls than on chat.”
She knew herself. She still said yes.
Virtual does not mean less. Virtual does not mean not real. It was a real, God-given friendship.
In December, I was the one in the hospital. Severe back pain. I could not eat. I could not keep anything down. Large needles. IV drips. I knew them too well.
In the day, I told myself, “this is just another hospital trip.”
In the night, I told myself, “when will this hardship end?”
That second question is the one I always avoid. No amount of crying or anger can answer it. Only the Lord knows when He will call me back.
There is a quiet voice that comes in those hospital nights. It tells me I am too much. It tells me my friends are tired of my updates. It tells me a friendship built on calls and chat is somehow lesser, like I do not deserve to grieve as deeply because I never sat across from her at a table.
That voice is a liar.
If you have ever felt this, that your closest friendships live in a screen and you wonder if they count, I know that feeling. They count. The Lord places the right people beside us in many forms. Some He gives us in person. Some He gives us through a screen. In the end, He looks at the heart, not at how we met.
In every pain, I am reminded that the Lord did not make me for this earth. He made me for heaven.
I came home from the hospital. AJ sat me down beside him.
“La, stay here next to me. I have something to tell you.”
I sat down. He said, “May is gone.”
I never met her in person. We will meet in heaven.
I keep saying that sentence to myself because it is true, and because the truth is the only thing strong enough to hold a grief like this. Heaven is not a soft word I use to make the loss smaller. Heaven is the place Christ has prepared. It is the country May has already reached. It is the reason our friendship was never just data on a screen. We were sisters bound by the same Lord, walking each other home.
Life is short. Your next stop is the Lord. May reached hers ahead of me.
So if you are reading this and your dearest friend is someone you have only known through a screen, please tell them today. Send the message. Make the call even if you both cry more on calls than on chat. Do not wait for an in-person meeting that may not come on this side of heaven. The friendship is already real. The love is already real. The Lord already counted it.
Just tonight. Just one message. Just the friend you have never met in person.
For the glory of God.
- Lala