Jeremy E. Sarber

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”

- C.S. Lewis

What a great quote! You have got to love the moment when the first light is shed on that common ground shared between you and another. You meet someone, maybe you were set up on a date with someone, or possibly you sat down for the first time to really talk with someone you’ve known for years and suddenly there’s that moment where a small spark ignites the conversation and you feel like you could talk to that person all night. It usually happens just as C.S. Lewis described it. I absolutely love that kind of simple, observational wisdom. Lewis is a good source for it, too.

I am always trying to watch, listen, and learn from the experiences of others. This has caused me to notice a very common theme among the stories I have heard from those who are happily married. It seems that most of those stories include the word, unexpected. Isn’t it amazing how such a wonderful thing like marriage can be the product of the unexpected? In other words, without any warning or prior indication, someone could walk into your life, even if that person was always there in the background, and turn your life completely upside-down (in a good way). Sound familiar? I find stories like those to be wonderfully inspiring. It’s a great advantage in life to understand that hope for the future is not vain and God-given patience is worth using.

Think about it. Maybe you’re single and lonely. It’s no shame to be lonely, by the way. I believe that’s how most of us are made. Even so, you never know what the day might hold for you. You could wake up and go about your day like any other and an unexpected whirlwind could carry you into a new stage in life that you have so desired but almost given up on entirely. You just never know because you would never see it coming. It could never be predicted. I hear it all the time. One married person says, “I would have never, in a million years, thought this person would have been the one for me.” Another says, “I was actually dating someone else at the time when this other person walked into my life. Next thing I knew we were married.” One more says, “I was to the age where I thought it was never going to happen for me, but then out of nowhere, there that person was.”

I realize this concept applies well beyond dating or marriage but a recent event in life really caused me to think about it in this way. Plus, I hate to see the lonely talk with such a hopeless attitude. Maybe this brief writing will mean something to them.

The event that led to this post happened on Monday afternoon/evening and I’ve been thinking it about since. It’s funny to me how you can know a person for quite some time without ever knowing that person. Danae Schaffer (I got permission to use her name) has been a good friend of my sister, Amanda, for as long as I can remember. In the life of their friendship, Danae has really become a family friend as well. She’s been to family-like gatherings even when Amanda could not be there. Even so, I would have never considered her more than an acquaintance. To me, she was Amanda’s friend, not mine.

On our most recent trip to Georgia, Danae came along with us since we were going to stay at Amanda’s house. When you ride with someone in a vehicle for 800+ miles, you have plenty of opportunity to talk that person. We did. I talked to her, I’m sure, more than I ever have before. Well, long story short, that led to us talking online after the trip and finally she invited me to come down to her college and spend the evening. I was actually weirded out by the fact that I did not feel weird about it. I assumed it would feel strange driving an hour and a half to visit “my sister’s friend” but it didn’t feel strange at all. In fact, I had a really great time.

What did we do? Well, after a tour of the campus, we ate, got some coffee, and spent the entire evening just talking. That’s it. If you know me at all, you know that I’m not much for talking. I could go all day without saying three words and think nothing of it. But Monday night, I talked. As it turns out, Danae is a really fun and easy person to talk to. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Now, I didn’t think about it at the time, but on the drive home a thought crept into my mind. I’ve known Danae for years, yet I never once thought, Hey, we’ll probably be good friends one day. My point is this: The unexpected is often amazing and it is possible to look forward to something you cannot see coming.