The Healing Power of Friendship

We had a very interesting conversation at the Free Store on Friday morning that started as we reflected on Psalm 23. It is a psalm that is so familiar that we can recite it or hear it without even thinking. So even though it is one of the most well known verses in the bible it is also probably one of the least understood.

We talked about how God is pictured as a shepherd and what that might mean. Why a shepherd? Isn't that a bit of a step down for God? And we decided that maybe that is exactly why that image is so important. It gives us a view of a God that identifies with low status positions and by doing that raises the status of people that don't get the respect they deserve in the world. We joked that maybe we could paraphrase the verse to read, "God is our garbage collector" or "walmart greeter." There are many very important but relatively low status jobs in our society. However, God identifies with people at the low end of the status spectrum! That struck us as a a pretty subversive act of imagination.

We then talked a bit about going from "green pastures" and "still waters" (which we liked to think of as a party with plenty of food and drink!) through the valley of the shadow of death to the house of God. This got us thinking about dark times in our lives.

One of our friends shared that she tried to commit suicide with alcohol and pills when she was 44. Another friend told us that he had been run over by a truck on his bicycle and found himself laying under the truck thinking he might die. Another friend said that he was in a bad car accident when he was younger in which his best friend's girlfriend was killed. As we sat there listening to these painful stories it struck us that unless we get beneath the surface of other people's lives we have no way to know what trauma may lie hidden deep within.

Trauma comes from a greek word which literally means, "a wound." We talked a bit about how we never really know what traumas people have been through in their lives. And yet those wounds may lie just under the surface but never really heal.

We came away from that conversation with a renewed appreciation for the hurt that people often carry around hidden deep within. We also sensed the healing power of relationships where such painful things can be talked about without fear of further injury.