Learning to love in a safe place

When I was about 10, I went through some "stuff" at home. My dad remarried and my stepmom and I had a rough and rocky ride for a few years. My mom was out of the picture for a while, which didn't help matters. It wasn't a great American tragedy but it was a defining time for me and it didn't define me well.

I had a friend whose parents were those kind of parents that seemed to collect kids. With three kids of their own, they hosted the band, the overnights, the birthday parties. They were the rural carpool, the most firm voices in the PTA and the parents who always offered to give kids a lift to church. In fact, they took me to church with their family for a few years. They were my hookup for Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and summer camp. They were willing to love me when I was unloveable. They gave me a home. And I don't mean a Saturday night every week or two. I mean whole summers. Full weekends. I ran away at 13 - to their house. No one even wondered where I was: I guess they knew.

That unconditional love saved me. Maybe it didn't make me better, smarter, more religious or more popular. But it gave me such hope and my best memories of childhood. When I think about doing that for someone's else's kid -- especially an annoying one like I was -- I can't imagine what it would take. They included me in holidays, took me everywhere, treated me like I was their own. At the time I didn't think much of it because I was too young to understand what I was receiving. Now I can only reflect with wonder. Why ever would they have done that for me?

You would think as much as I loved them -- still love them-- that I speak to them with regularity. I confess, I don't. I have created this separation between who I was then and who I am now and it's very hard for this woman to reach across to the people I knew when I was that little girl.

There was a very powerful skit that Nicole Johnson performed at Women of Faith -- about how we need to have faith enough to stretch out that thing in us that's withered and weak so that Jesus can heal it. It just flashed in to my mind. Maybe that's God telling me to call these people and say "I love you" just once more. Or to write and say how much I appreciated the evenings we spent singing together, the gift of my first job, the loan of a car to get me there and the patience and sweetness they had with me that made me want to be good for them. For chocolate milk and responsibility and space to be a little wild. For being my safe harbor.

One day, soon, I will.