Sometimes It's Better Not to Know

 One of the ostensibly positive services social media provides is the ability to locate long-lost friends and family members.

Though I have to say, for me, this particular "service" has more often been a curse than a blessing.

It has shown me exactly how valued I am/was by any human being in my past.

The few times I have located people I knew years ago, they have politely responded with a weak, "Oh...hi!" and then disappeared back into the ethereal forest, never to be heard from again.

So, oh well.  Not really life-affirming.

Be that as it may, I had one friend that I secretly yearned to reconnect with.  A friend from my childhood.  My best friend.  For more than 20 years.  We were practically sisters during our school years.  Nearly inseparable.  We spent so much time at each others' houses that we called each others' parents "Mom and Dad."  

Maid/matron of honor in our weddings, months apart, in 1976.

 

When the husband and I moved to Oregon in 1984, my friend and I drifted apart.  She and her husband visited us a couple of years later, on their way to moving themselves to Arizona.

I saw her one last time back in the 90's--an awkward weekend visit that ended with promises to keep in touch.  I wrote her a letter shortly after she went back home.  It came back, "Moved, Left No Forwarding Address."

After that, I made a few attempts to find her on the internet now and then.  When I came up empty time after time, I put 2 and 2 together and figured I had my answer. If I couldn't contact her, it was probably because she didn't want me to.  Ok.  I made my peace with it.  It was what it was. 

Until last month.

A whole complex set of circumstances involving Facebook and my husband (who refused to have anything to do with FB during the years I was on it, but has inexplicably changed his mind, now that I have walked away from it...) put me in touch with this friend I have been secretly longing to find for so many years.

She sent me an email.  I sent her one back.  She answered.  I responded.

All very tentative.

All very revealing about where each of us is on this life's journey.  

And increasingly indicative of how far apart we have traveled from one another, physically, spiritually, ideologically.

She is a bible-believing evangelical.  A deaconess, married to a deacon.  In Arizona.

Do the math.

Now, I have no problem with REAL Christians. I told her my attitude toward spiritual beliefs is that I am fine with whatever works for an individual, whatever makes them a better person.  And I expect that latitude to be extended to me in return. She responded that she is sorry that I don't believe that Jesus Christ is my lord and savior.  Face palm.

Still, I held out hope that she was the kind of Christian who had chosen the actual guidance of Christ over the ideological right-wing, Trumpian bullshit minefield. Hoped against hope that she would be one of those rare individuals who had not jumped into the political fray with both feet. Knowing the "her" of 40 years ago, I thought it possible this would be so. 

Yesterday, I convinced my husband, who is FB friends with my old friend, to show me her page.  I really just wanted to see a current picture of her, and maybe her new husband, and get some idea of her life.

She had four pictures posted on FB.

One of them was this:

So, today, I am sad.

I am glad to know that she's alive, and happy, and doing what she wants to do, fulfilling what she believes is her purpose on the planet.

But I am so, SO sad that she has been led to choose Trump over reality.  To choose the Golden Calf over the true way of Christ.

And I hate this ideological crevasse that has yawned across our world, cruelly separating those who should be connected by love and a shared history. 

Sometimes, it's better not to know.