It’s been one year and one day since my friend Steph passed away. Perhaps not coincidentally, it has been the toughest year of my life.

I’ve had to learn something I was hoping not to learn for quite some time–something that older people learn as they start to lose the people who grew up with them. When you lose people who have journeyed with you for a significant part of your life, especially the early part of your life when you grow and change so much, you can’t reproduce what the long-time friend knows without explanation. When you lose a person who remembers The You You Were and the friends who you retain only know The Person You Are, there is no way to catch them up on the distance you traveled over that span. They have no frame of reference for it. In the transaction, you lose some of your own past–the collective memory of your identity is gone. It isn’t their fault, but even if you could find the words to try to explain to them what you’ve gone through, they wouldn’t really know. They would have to take your word for it. The longtime friend needs no explanation–they were there. That is, of course, no reason not to make new friends, but in the next breath you know when you make the new friend you may not have time to cultivate the same kind of relationship you had with your longtime friend. The new friend is no replacement for what you’ve lost.

Losing Steph hurt because she was one of the handful of genuinely good listeners in my life. A truly gifted listener is a rare gift, especially if you are, like me, a verbal processor. Steph wandered with me in the catacombs of my thoughts, frequently covering terrain with me without judgment as I talked myself through the knotted and disjointed thoughts that have always twisted up my life. She wandered with me, I think in part, because she was always fascinated by the ways that other people thought. She would put herself in your shoes, pretend she assumed what you seemed to be assuming and then ask questions and speak wisdom from the inside. If there was ever a selfish part of that listening for her, I never managed to figure out what it was, unless you count the relief of knowing that there is at least one person as crazy or crazier than you. Despite that, she listened without judgment. She was a rare jewel of a human being and friend.

I’m speaking about this selfishly because I assume at this point that Steph is past caring if I relied on her or not. I’m sitting here typing at my kitchen table at one in the morning. She is participating in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb for the rest of eternity. I don’t think she’ll mind.

I have spent the last couple of months wondering how I was going to feel yesterday. I spent some time around my birthday in a pretty sad state, for a variety of reasons, but I don’t typically enjoy my birthday, so that isn’t particularly unique. The holidays were hard, and by the time I got to New Year’s, I was in a bit of a funk. But as I approached the anniversary of Steph’s passing, I started to ask myself, “what would Steph want you do to in honor of her memory?” Although the easy answer took me a second, I was quickly able to determine what she wouldn’t have wanted: me going into a pit of despair. Once I had that extreme ruled out, the answer was easy: she would want me to be happy, healthy, and whole. She spent most of her time with me helping to nudge me in that direction. It’s the best tribute. Yesterday wasn’t easy, but having something to focus on for Steph was a help.

Because of the way I’m wired, talking would be helpful, but the time I frequently have to talk and process is in the late watches of the night, and while I have friends who have volunteered to spend time then, I don’t feel good about doing it. My wife, who was already on the short list of people who love me enough to listen well, has been a trooper, but I need to put this somewhere other than in her ears. That leaves this blog, with its limited readership.

I have avoided talking about my personal life (thoughts, feelings, struggles, etc.) on my blogs since college for two primary reasons. The first is that talking about everything you feel in your blog as though people care about what you write there is something that teenage drama kings do, not 38 year old men. There is a self-indulgence in it that has grown distasteful to me. (Though I suppose, if I’m being honest, writing stuffy blogs about theology, philosophy and culture as though people care what you think is just as self-indulgent in a different way.) The second reason is that I have struggled with a rejection issue for many years (which is one of the many reasons that Steph and I always got along so well–so did she). The worst case for a blog talking about your feelings isn’t being looked down for it, though that is certainly a downside. The worst case is being looked down on for what you’ve written while still not managing to describe it accurately. It’s one thing to be rejected for what you are. It’s something else for being rejected before you’ve even managed to say well the thing you’re being rejected for.

Nevertheless, I need a place to process, and I need to struggle with the words. Making myself write it down and publish it is a good exercise that pushes me towards health, and that’s what Steph would want. So here we are. For a while in this blog, I’m going to talk about what I’m actually like, and what I’m really struggling with. If you want to read it, great. If you don’t, I certainly won’t be hurt. But that’s what it’s going to be. For me. But also for Steph.

Reading: “Why the Reformation Still Matters,” by Michael Reeves and Chris Chester.

Listening to: “Say Something” by Justin Timberlake (f. Chris Stapleton)