I am currently feeling itchy and irritable. I think I know why, but I’m not going to admit it, because it’s extremely selfish and self-centered. Let’s just say, some plans I was counting on got rearranged for something much more important, but I just hate when my plans are thwarted. I hate disappointment.

Anyway.

Something has been on my mind all week. I have to commit to writing how amazed I am at a particular person. My friend Tori.

On November 17th, I get an e-mail from someone I didn’t know. That’s not a huge surprise. But she said she related to me, and that she knew where I was coming from because she’s a single mom too. She’s a Christian and she loves the Foo Fighters. Okay, cool.

Little did I know that this amazing woman was going to play a major part in reconfiguring my life and keeping me sane during the weirdest part of my life ever. Little did I know that she was going to be dead honest with me, even when I didn’t want to hear it. She cares - she cares.

Tori lives in Wisconsin, and I’ve never met her face to face. I’ve talked to her on the phone once - when I was going into meltdown. Yet she has had a huge hand in my life. God turned her onto my site, somehow, and then challenged her to write me. She accepted the challenge, and He has kept her right in the thick of things. She is one of my best friends. I’m very blessed.

Her pastor’s son loves Great Big Everything. Wow. She and I think alike a lot of times, but she has more clarity and wisdom than I. And she isn’t afraid to use it.

She rocks my world. I mean it. And it’s about time I said it.

I was rereading an e-mail she sent to me today, and it alternately pissed me off and made me laugh. I had explained to her in detail what I had dealt with Wednesday night, and she had cut my e-mail into pieces, as usual, and responded to every single part of it. She called me on some major shit - the shit I usually don’t even tell anyone. She encouraged me when I was faltering on whether or not I should have said what I did that night. And she confirmed some things I just needed to be balanced on. But believe me, if she doesn’t agree, she isn’t shy. And that’s why the e-mail pissed me off in places. She won’t tell me what I want to hear - only the truth.

And the coolest thing of all is that she shares part of herself with me. I swear, I love that. Someone who’s not afraid to say, here, look at me, I really screwed up, and here’s what God did with it, and here’s how I reap the consequences. Someone who lets me in and lets me weep when they weep, and rejoice when they rejoice.

I was telling Melissa last night that I get something different and wonderful from each of my friends. A week or so ago she and I were at dinner, and I was trying to say I’d started dressing very semi-goth. What ended up coming out of my mouth was that I was very semi-gloth. Which sounds like semi-gloss… paint. ‘Twas very funny. So Mel quipped about my semi-gloth paint having a limited warranty, and that it’s known to flake easily. I was in tears laughing.

But what happened with that bizarre accidental analogy was that I had a glimpse of the types of paint each of my friends are. Melissa, bless her heart, is the base coat. Extraordinarily necessary and very practical. Nothing else works without it. Max is my brilliant streak of primary acrylic paint. He isn’t afraid to give life the colour it deserves - and sometimes pushes the envelope. And Tori - Tori is the detail, painted with a small brush in black. She outlines things and really accentuates what is already there, just difficult to see.

What am I? I’ll stick with the tending-to-flake semi-gloth. =)

I so want Tori to bring her son and come visit for a while. I wish we were closer to each other in distance. I really just want to give her a hug, and pray with her, and encourage her face to face. Thank her in person. Listen to her sing with Max (inside joke).

After Max read several of the first e-mails she sent me back in November, he looked at me and smiled and said, “Right on. Now there’s finally something that can be said for the internet.” Thank God for the internet. And thank God for Tori.

Grateful, in tears,


mich