Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

It was late when the phone rang. I was already in bed, but I knew it was my best friend, J.

Claudia, this is J. I’m getting married!

J, I am so excited for you! How did he ask?

The conversation was short. It was late and we would talk tomorrow when I went to meet with J for our weekly Bible study.

J was my best friend. She taught me about Christ and was even more excited than I when I accepted him as my personal Lord and Savior. We’d been friends for a long time, but she had been a Christian much longer than I had and I wanted the joy that she had in her life.

The next day I went to work then stopped at J’s for Bible study. Since we were both single, we met weekly for Bible study together then I would stay overnight at her house and leave for work in the morning.

The conversation started off with all the excitement with which it ended the night before. She was my best friend and she was getting married. She was also a single mom who desired God’s will more than anything. She had been single for a while and was raising her young son alone. She was beautiful, she was full of life, and now she was getting married.

The more we talked, though, the more I felt in my heart that I had to tell her what was on my heart. After all, she was my best friend and I couldn’t bear to see her get hurt.

You see, she had gone out with this man, Mr. Right, for the first time the week before. She had known of him through church activities, but she had only gone out with him twice and had never even spoken to him before that for all I knew. How could she possibly consider marrying him?

The conversation quickly turned cold. She knew this was God’s will for her and I knew (or thought I knew) that it couldn’t possibly be. In my months of knowing God, I was sure He didn’t work that fast, not when it came to something as important as marriage.

After feeling the ice fill the air, the conversation stopped abruptly. We were at an impasse and she had not seen the error of her ways.

Even though I had the urge to leave the house, to walk out the door and let us both think it over a while, I knew that if I walked out the door I would never see her again. In one moment, I would lose my best friend and any hope of having her in my life.

The air was still icy, but somehow she managed to not throw me out of the house. Maybe she felt the same as I did: if I left, we would never see each other again.

I must have slept soundly, because sometime after I feel asleep she called Mr. Right and he came to the house. They sat in his car in the garage and she told him what I had said. She didn’t understand how I could not be happy for her.

He comforted her and told her that I was right for being concerned about her. He could understand that I would want the best for her and I was only speaking up because I loved her so much.

To make a long story short, I still thought for a while that she was making a mistake, but I also knew that if I was going to be her friend, I had to support her in whatever decision she made.

J decided to go through with the wedding. The engagement was not much longer than the 7 days they dated. Three or four months after that fateful night, I stood with J as one of her bridesmaids and vowed to support her and Mr. Right as long as they both shall live.

More than 20 years later, Mr. and Mrs. Right are still together. They are very happily married and have shared life’s joys and sorrows as do all married couples.

What’s more, J is still my best friend and she truly knows how much I love her because I cared enough to tell her when I thought she was making a decision that would hurt her and I stood by her when she was convinced she was right, because that’s what friends do.

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