Closure

I was standing on Campus Court, a street at the southeastern edge of Abilene Christian University's campus, watching the Centennial Homecoming parade, when suddenly my heart froze. Standing on the other side of the street, beyond the ridiculous Gamma Sigma Phi float, was a woman that I once thought I was going to marry.

Wendy had been my best friend during my sophomore year of college. I adored her, even as I was dating other people. Then, the summer that I was up here in DC interning at the Fairfax Church of Christ, I realized that I was completely in love. The realization came as I was gushing about her one day and (knowing that I'd been dating someone for about three months) one of the ministers said, "Is Wendy your girlfriend?" "Nahhh..." I replied, "Wendy's the girl I'm gonna marry."

Well that kind of said it all. I had never before said that I was going to marry someone while really meaning it. Still, life is a funny thing. I never did tell her how I felt, and she soon started dating someone else - someone who decided that she shouldn't hang out with me anymore. They got married some time later, and I hadn't seen or spoken to Wendy since I graduated from college. To be honest, I was bitter about how that all played out. I was angry that Wendy could set aside our friendship as easily as it seemed that she had. I felt betrayed and abandoned.

I held on to all those feelings for the last five years. They were there, lingering in the back of my mind whenever I'd think of her - which was frequently, for a long time, although those memories were less and less prevalent as time passed. And then, last Saturday, they were all dredged up again in dramatic fashion.

At first I didn't know what I was going to do. I could ignore her, of course - just pretend that I hadn't seen her and move on. But something inside wouldn't let me do that. I knew that I needed to face down my feelings and talk to her. I can't tell you how nervous I was as I walked toward her, because I had no idea if she would recognize me or if she'd have any desire to talk to me at all.

I shouldn't have worried. When she saw me approaching, her eyes came to life and she ran over to give me a hug. Then she introduced me to her two kids.

It was unbelievable. She caught me up on how her life has been over the past five years while I tossed a balloon with her two-year-old son. I got to hold her three-month-old daughter as we chatted about how our lives were both similar and dramatically different from what we had imagined when we were back in school. And as we spoke, as I soaked in the personality that had won me over so long ago, I realized that I couldn't hold on to the hard feelings I had been harboring. Wendy was living the life that she was supposed to live, loving Chris and mothering two spectacularly beautiful children. I'm living the life to which I'm called, working up here. For the first time, I really, concretely accepted that however much I'd loved her, we were never meant to be together. And that was ok. So I guess that's what psychologists call "closure."