A Good Friend Walks Beside
Audio version here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/xh8ehkg3fub
I’ll try to not bury the lede here, something I try to teach my students….
I was alone, walking my baby down the aisle at church- just after the water was poured onto his head. I felt so alone, and out of the corner of my eye I realized she was there with me, my friend and one of his newly minted godmothers- carrying his baptismal candle.
Good friends walk beside us, sometimes even right behind us, and are there even if we don’t know we need them.
It was a small moment, but it meant everything to me.
It was my third time in my church since the pandemic, I switched churches during that time, so this congregation doesn’t yet know me. Having the baby baptized was important to me, is important to me. My faith is a big deal to me, even if I don’t talk about it a lot.
His father had gotten sick and was unable to attend with me. So it was me, my parents, my older kids, and the two women who are my oldest friends- and now the baby’s godmothers.
To say we have been in and out of each other’s lives over the past twenty years is an understatement. Life has so often taken us down different paths. Life has so often shaken each of us, and even made us mad at one another. (Okay that might just be me- I’m the hot headed one, and always have been. Just ask Jessica about the time I was going to fight a guy for breaking up with her at the homecoming dance. To my credit, I DID tell him if he hurt her I would hurt him… I was just living up to the promise.) But always, we come back to one another.
They were both there for me that day, and even before when I frantically last minute texted them asking to be the baby godmothers. I couldn’t quite tell you how it snuck up on me, but it did.
And so that day, I found myself feeling so alone- stumbling over the baptismal vows, selfishly sad that his father wasn’t feeling well, and suddenly feeling very aware that unlike the family on the other side… there was no mother and father here to present the newly baptized. It’s a role I have often worn alone, I am used to it with my oldest two, but I had not been so aware of it with this little one before. His dad was just sick, something that could not be helped, but I think it brought back flashes of being newly divorced with two little ones… and the intense criticism that came with it in this town. The staring eyes at all times, looking for even the hint of a wrong move. The pressure to always be perfect.
When Father Ben asked us to present the children to the congregation, I walked alone to show him off. Or so I thought. Just behind me was my friend, and further behind her was her sister. Always there to make sure I am never alone.
