There's a distinctive point in the movement of our bathroom door on its hinges when I know that it begins to squeal.  The time-worn metal handle pulls close to the towel rack, as if by magnetism of some sort, and I anticipate the sound.  If you move the door quickly, bringing it to an abrupt halt before it hits the wall, you can sort of skip the squeak.  It's almost as if I feel that by swinging that door as quickly as possible, I can compress the offending noise into a smaller space of experience.  I haven't been able to push milliseconds together into tinier moments of time yet, but every time I walk into that room, be it in the dark of night (with baby asleep steps away) or the soft glow of mid-day, I try anyway.

A friend of mine whom I haven't seen in a long while recently replied to my e-mail to her, a message that I'd sent her out of the blue.  My contacting her was, in all honesty, more driven by selfishness than by a selfless concern about how her life has been - I had a question for her regarding the degree program she'd just graduated from, as I'm back into that morass that I never seem to leave: existential angst centered around that mysterious "next step" of where, how, why, and if.  I figured she might have some insight into her "next step", or at least be able to make me feel normal about being relatively clueless about my own.

Unbenownst to me, lost in myself and my day-to-day existence as I tend to be, her mother entered Hospice not too long ago.  She died this past Friday, knowing and loving Jesus but leaving my friend, her family, and others who miss her laugh, smile, and constant Diet Coke-drinking in her wake.  I was struck by two things:
A) How easily we can get sucked up into ourselves, thereby being clueless about the struggles and sufferings of others around us, and B) How it seems to take impacting events like birth, death, loss, and pain to make us stop, contemplate, and take account of our lives, our interaction with God, our relationships with friends and family, and our everyday choices.  Veering close to mysticism within analogy, these events seem to be "doors" that, in their opening and closing, either introduce or remove others from our immediate sphere of experience.  It is the newness or loss of their presence in our lives that shakes us, oftentimes just for an aching, pivotal moment, from our inward-turned eyes.  We're kind of at a loss when this happens, and I see that as healthy.  It's the reminding we need, more often than not, that our cognitive structure of "This is how life is, how it works, and how it will be" is more short-sighted and unimaginative than safe and sound.

I don't know what doors He Who Loves Us is planning to open before my friend in the near or distant future.  I know her to be a woman of fervor, creativity, passion, and integrity who inspires and challenges my wife and I.  But, I also know her to be a woman who is a daughter, a sister, a cousin, and a friend.  Education and exploration does not a hedged, protected bastion of intellectual strength make.  Actually, I don't think real "strength" as our heart and soul cry out for it is to be found therein at all.  She's hurting, but she's asking what and why and how.

I'm thankful for that, and am trying to do the same.