“Hey, want to go to the lounge?” Ryan asked.
I had just gotten back to Provo from the Salt Lake airport,
it was three in the morning, and it was snowing. I told him in my whiniest
voice that I didn’t want to go. But then I looked at his face, and realized
that he was close to crying—something I’d never seen before. I hurriedly shook
my head. “Wait, just kidding, let’s go.”
It felt like a longer walk than usual, and it was freezing.
We got to the door and found caution tape spread across the frame and a note
saying there were renovations going on and it was off limits. We stood at the
door for a while, shivering. Finally, it
was too cold to stand there, so we went around the building to the laundry
room. We ended up sitting on the counter
in front of the dryers and watching the clothes spin (because, for some unknown
reason, there were people doing laundry at 3:00 am). And that’s all we did for
a while, just sat there.
He finally started to talk about everything that was wrong.
For a while, I tried to think of things to say to fix it, or ways to make it
better, but I couldn’t come up with anything. When he got through everything,
all I could do was put my hand on his knee and try to tell him everything I
wanted to say with just a squeeze of my fingers.
Then he said, “Thanks for being my best friend.” That’s when
I had my epiphany: I didn’t have to think of all the answers, and he wasn’t
asking me to fix everything. He just wanted me to be there and listen. Just
being his friend was all I needed to do.
What a sweet story about so many different journeys--to the laundry room, through life, through difficulties. Friends can be journeys in and of themselves (depending on what kind of friends you have, and what kind of problems they have), but they are also one of the greatest things we have to help us on our journeys. Those are the guys I want to hear about. So all these explorers sailed around like crazy--but who were the Ryans or the Jennifers in their stories?
ReplyDeleteExcellent example of the importance of listening to others, even though we may not necessarily care about the topics. A lady I used to work with would come into work everyday and tell me a story about her cat from the night before. Most of them were pointless stories, but I was willing to listen because no one else would. I ended up becoming great friends with this lady, and finding things that we could relate to eventually just because I decided to listen. Great reminder of this principle!
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