Greater love has no man....

A wise man once said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay his life down for his friends".

Do you have any friends like this? Hmmm...the better question may be "are you a friend like this"? Would your name come up when any of your friends think of who in their life would sacrifice for them? Mine wouldn't.

You must understand...this is a phrase that i used to build my life around. I tried my best to model this in my life. And this morning when i was talking with my wife, the subject of friends came up. She mentioned that i am not that good at keeping in contact with my friends from back home. That stung...but she was dead right. I suck at this. So I started thinking why I am so horrible at returning e-mails and phone calls and reaching out on my own to contact these people that gave me so much of their time before? The answer to this question is simple....I'm scared.

I'm scared that if i keep in really close contact with my friends from back home, I will want to hang out with them more, and the realization that I can't do that...well, that hurts. The more I talk with them on the phone or communicate through e-mail, the more I want to say a quick, "Hey, what are you doing tuesday?"

How selfish is this? I am protecting myself from the pain that I would experience in being away from my friends by slowly severing all ties with them. Looking back, this has got to be one of the most cowardly acts I have been guilty of in a long time. And my life isn't short on cowardly acts. Look how far I have moved away from "greater love". A phrase like that never had any fine print that read "only if you have a friendship that is convenient". IT was a blanket statement. If you sacrifice your life for your friends, that is the highest potential love you can have as a human being. Or maybe it is calling those souls like mine into check. Maybe it is a sobering reminder of what you are actually saying when you tell your friends that you love them. You know... a "count the cost of your words" kind of thing. Either way, in order to save myself from the insatiable desire to connect face to face with a friend from home, I remain absent.

How much of my life did I leave in Winnipeg? I know I left practically all of my friends. I left my family. I left the community I grew up in and everything familiar that I ever knew. I left the island I always came home to after being stretched and shaped into an alternate version of myself in other lands. I guess I never really realized the full consequences of my decision. Maybe I never will... but I think that i have a clearer window into that this morning. Having said all that, I would do it again...and again...and again. I never even considered it a choice, it was something I had to do for me.

And so I moved away...so what. It's not like I am the first guy to do that. It doesn't excuse hanging my freinds out to dry. The kicker is that i damaged myself more than anyone else. Each of my friends were only cut off from me, I cut myself off from all of my friends. Boy that was dumb. I feel more isolated now than almost any time in my life. So much for sparing myself pain. Hell, I caused it. I also hurt those that interpreted my lack of effort as a lack of concern or care for them.

I have not been the same since i left Winnipeg. The worst part about this whole thing is that I think I did all this same stuff to God. Like I left him in winnipeg as well. Man, I have a lot of apologies to make. I think that i better start with God.

What a lie! That i would somehow gain from shutting out the people that have supported and shaped me over the course of my life. Oh, how thick the wool has been.

I once asked a man I had just met what the best part of a story was. He replied, "the best part of a story is the redemption of a human being...there's nothing better than that". It was the most intelligent answer I have ever heard. Looks like I have to go try to redeem myself. Better get started.