cord
Just awake and still unwilling to peel back the covers, I rub the sleep from my eyes, giving thanks for rest. My phone, flipped on its face on the bedside table, begins to vibrate and jump like an insect trapped and beating against the window.
“What is going on?” Kevin says, stirring beside me.
I pop up on one elbow and capture the pathetic thing. It clicks and comes awake in my hand, and that’s when I see the text notifications from my friends collecting like Harry Potter’s owl mail. Had these been handwritten letters, I’d have been covered up by them.
“It’s—.” The word dies in my throat, clogged by grief. This news, it cannot be.
“What?” Kevin says, now up on his elbows too.
I start to read the very beginning of the conversation, the details about our friends suddenly dragged and thrown ruthlessly into The Pit like Joseph, like David. What is it David writes? “He lifted me out of the pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand (Psalm 40: 2).” But for our friends just now, there’s no footing at all, only mud that threatens to swallow them up. Sinking, I stop reading long enough to choke back my tears and start again, right in the place where my voice collapsed and the syllables drowned. Finally, I just pass the phone to Kevin.
Oh no. Oh no. No.
Phone back in hand and Kevin sitting with his face in his hands on the edge of the bed, I text something blurry and garbled. My finger shakes as I scroll through my contacts to our friend’s name, as I hit the icon to call. Of course she doesn’t answer; I sit on the edge of the bed, listening to her voicemail message, thinking how strong she sounds, how casual. After the tone, I say something teary, something jumpy like my phone, like my fingers.
Scripture says that “a cord of three strands is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12),” so what of a cord of nine? We’re like a clutch of sisters, and when tragedy comes, we tighten up like a knot. Kevin looks back at me, at the phone dancing in my hand—bzzzt bzzzt bzzzzttt bzzzt.
“There are nine of us,” I say simply, though he hardly needs the explanation. We have done this while searching for lost children, through tornadoes, and to and from countless hospital rooms. In fact,we do this every time something threatens, as though it’s merely our natural response to pain. And the owl mail, it’s the text equivalent of how we naturally are together, the way we gather around the islands in our kitchens or sliding chairs back from our tables. Maybe it seems like we’re in nine different places, but the truth is that we’re actually all together now, dangling over The Pit, reaching for our friends. We’re a rope of locked arms strategizing rescue, and suddenly, we possess formidable strength. How fitting that the texts should be called a thread.
During these singularly focused conversations, we speak with one voice and one heart, each adding layers of depth to our collective sentiment. If one hurts, we all hurt, and this while being nine very different people. Our cracks hardly make the same pattern, and we would all admit that our friendship gets messy about the edges; that we hang loosely sometimes. But when tragedy comes, we tighten up like a knot. We’re a thousand texts and a thousand prayers, and for a while, our conversation defies the boundaries of time and place. For a while, we are unanimously present.
Over breakfast, while my phone bounces the friendship dance on the table and my children smile knowingly at me, I realize that this is what God does among a group of people determined to love each other.
“You’re my family,” my hurting friend finally writes, and I turn away and let the tears fall.
Yes.
