So Long, My Beautiful Friend

Until We Meet Again

“Assemble in your imagination all the friends you enjoy being with the most, the companions who evoke the deepest joy, your most stimulating relationships, the most delightful of shared experiences, the people with whom you feel completely alive. – THAT is a hint at heaven, for there God commands the blessing, ordains eternal life.”

-Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

I don’t remember which of our town’s two Mexican restaurants that we were at when Angie first offered her pulpit to me. We used to go to them both. But I do remember the clearness in her eyes when she told me that I had something important to say, and that she wanted to give me a place to say it. And at the time I didn’t really know what exactly it was that I had to say, or how exactly to say it, and I thought it was so odd that she was willing to set my untamed, unpolished, shaky voice loose on her beloved Congregation. The church that she had planted herself, and that was full of souls that she treasured beyond measure. She must be crazy to trust me with with this. I thought to myself as I left lunch that day. And the answer with Angie was, yes, she was, just a little bit. The perfect amount of crazy, really.

Angela Roberson had this way of believing in me long before I believed in myself. She saw things in me before I saw them in myself. She called me by my name before I knew it, with a frankness that seemed to imply that it was as obvious as a word embroidered to the front pocket of my shirt. And I think she did that for a lot of people. That was just the way she operated in the world. One shining aspect of the gift that God extended to us, through her, during her short time here on Earth. She saw things with such hope and faith that her sight helped to enable others to live her belief in them into action. How stunning is that? How lucky were those of us who were blessed to have been some of the lucky ones who got to experience God’s generosity poured out like that?

Just writing it out on this page makes me wish that I could have just one more afternoon sit on my porch with her.

And honestly, the fact that I won’t get another afternoon like that, this side of heaven, makes me mad and sad. Because she is gone. And it makes no sense to me that our world has been robbed of such beauty. A young and vibrant and generous mother, wife, pastor, and friend. And everyone needed more of her. Not less.

There is so much more that I could write about Angie today. She overcame so much in this lifetime, and she did so with such grace and generosity in both spirit and story. And I think it is such garbage that she never got to write a book about it. It would have been so great.

But as I sit here, still not quite believing that she is gone, I think that the best thing that I can do to memorialize my friend is to keep speaking. To keep saying the hard things that I would really rather not say. To keep living her belief in me into action. To keep living into that new name. And I think most of all, to be the kind of person who helps others to do the same. Because there is now a gap in that department that is miles and miles long.