To Carol, With Love From Bodie

The first book I wrote was entitled Between Fourteen and Thirty-Nine. I was fourteen when I began to follow Jesus and I wrote it in my 39th year. For today's blog I thought I would invite you for a walk down my memory lane by sharing one of the chapters from that book. This story is about one of the best friends I have ever had. Carol, this one is for you.

Childhood friendships are the most intense. To be young is to be trustful to the point of being naive. There are few cynical or jaded souls on the playground. Children believe what they are told. They trust. This is, I believe, some of what Jesus had in mind for us when he told us to “become like little children” (Matthew 18:3). Our faith in our Heavenly Father must grow to resemble a child’s resolve to believe their hearts, in spite of all outward evidence to the contrary. A child’s resolve to believe is strong and their faith is tenacious.

My best friend as a child was Carol Egan. She was a neighbor of mine. Carol was, well, Carol was a tomboy. It was Carol who taught me how to throw a football and it was Carol who played tackle football with me. She was a feisty, red-haired spitfire. So many of my childhood days centered around walking on the beach, riding bikes or fishing with Carol. Daily we would go on wondrous adventures along the Maine coastline. And we would fight—boy would we fight! Not just verbal sparring, but down-on-the-ground-knock-down-drag-around-hair-pulling conflict. The fights would end with “I hate you”s yelled back across the shoulders and promises to never speak again. And within an hour or so we would be once again back together as if nothing had happened before.

I told you that one of our favorite things to do was to walk along the beach, but I want to tell you why. You see, the beaches in Maine are real beaches. No sand. All rocks. In fact, it is called the “rock-bound coast” of Maine precisely because it is rock-bound (clever, huh?). Anyway, up from the water’s edge, just past the high tide line, there was a huge expanse of shore covered with nothing but small pebbles. It was in this area that Carol and I found our treasure. Over the many years, people have discarded thousands of bottles into the sea. Fishermen, sailors, shipwrecks and tourists have all added to the count. As these bottles break, they become scattered pieces of broken glass. The sea takes these small fragments and smoothes the rough edges of the glass and fashions them into glass pebbles. No doubt this tidal polishing takes time, but eventually the sharp edges are gone and the edges are smooth to the touch. Carol and I called them “colored glass” because we found them in a wondrous spectrum of colors: green, red, violet, yellow, clear and blue. Colors as varied as the bottles tossed into the ocean. By closely examining the stones below us, Carol and I would literally mine glass pebbles. It took time, but soon we were able to find colored glass all over the beach. We would fill our pockets with treasure.

Eventually time and family took me away from Maine to Pennsylvania. Carol and I would keep in touch by phone, letter and visits. She would sign her letters, “Love, Carol” and I would sign mine “Sincerely, Bodie.” One day the phone rang to announce that Carol had died of leukemia. There were no more letters after that. And my heart was broken and my soul was pierced with the shards. In so many ways her passing marked the death of my childhood and tears began to taint my soul. I remember thinking, “People aren’t supposed to die in 5^th grade, are they?”

That was over twenty-five years ago and as I write these words my tears still whisper her name. I still hear her laugh and I wish with all my heart I would have signed my letters, “Love, Bodie.” But the tears of an adult are different than the tears of a child. A child mourns the loss, but the years have taught me to anticipate the reunion. As a child I missed my friend, as an adult I look for the days of continued adventures. As a little boy I thought I had lost my truest friend, yet now I can see others who have walked beside me from that time until now.

I have some pieces of colored glass in my office at home. Each time I look at them and each time I hold them my mind journeys back to that simpler time. I hear the sea and I hear Carol’s laughter above the chorus of waves. I see two little children on the beach playing under an umbrella of seagulls. And I thank the Father for the tides of time that smooth the sharp points of broken glass and heal the jagged edges of broken hearts.