Once in a blue moon, there comes a moment where you meet someone, and it's as if your souls already know each other. For me, this happened at what would otherwise seem an unlikely moment: the month before my freshman year, when I showed up as an awkward newbie for tennis team tryouts. I met Sarah there, a rising junior, and though life has taken us on at times converging and diverging paths geographically, our friendship has carried along, with an amazing number of moments where we give each other a weird look after having said/thought/experienced the exact same thing.
Today we celebrated her mom, who passed away two weeks ago after "engaging" bravely with breast and ovarian cancer for the last six years. This hit particularly close to home, as my own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer around the same time that Bev heard the news. And while we all miss Bev - though also celebrate her release from a long, painful sickness - it is her motto that I raise a blog post toast to today: "I'll make the sandwiches." Her motto spoke to her dedication in nurturing and serving those around her, a generosity of both spirit and resources that rang through decades of teaching reading to children and ESL adults, storing/distributing goods to those in need, and - of course - making actual sandwiches.
I find the mix of working full time with a baby brings a hectic tone to life that allows the weeks to blur by in a survival mode of sorts: head down, trying to keep up with chores, baby, life. But the service for Bev today was a much-needed reminder to raise my head from the sand of my own survival to pay more attention to the needs of those around me. As Ecclesiastes wisely states, there is a season for everything, and this perhaps is not the season where I can lavishly spend hours volunteering. But it should always be a season of being mindful of others, aware enough to care and to know what their needs are, even if I can't be the one to meet them.
Bev, this one is to you. May we all offer to make the sandwiches.
Some bright morning when this life is over
I'll fly away
To that home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away
When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly
I'll fly away
Oh how glad and happy when we meet
I'll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I'll fly away
Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I'll fly away
