Honeysuckle Tears

Nov 30

It is odd how it is still so vivid and so raw. I can still taste the sweetness of the honeysuckle nectar on my tongue, I can still feel the hot tears on my cheeks and the ragged breaths in my chest. I can still feel the comforting hand of a future best friend on my shoulder. I can still see my concerned parents’ faces and still hear the librarian’s Indian-accented words of peace in my ears.

I had been to boarding school before but it had been a few years ago. I knew I would miss home and my family but that was far from my mind when we were first unpacking and settling in at school. It was exciting meeting my roommates from India, France, New Zealand and Canada and meeting my British dorm parents and teachers. I was filled with the energizing anticipation of something new.

The shock came to my system when I finally said goodbye to my parents before they departed back home on the 44 hour train ride from Tamil Nadu to New Delhi. I wandered sad and aimlessly around the basketball court before class began, blinking through my tears. A kind student who would later become one of my closest friends led me to a bush with small, bright yellowy-orange flowers. He called it Honeysuckle and showed me how to pull off the flower and suck out a tiny taste of the sweet nectar from the base of the flower. The distraction was nice, but ingrained in my memory is looking up to the top of the hill and seeing my parents watching me from afar with concerned faces. What goes through the mind of a parent at a moment like that? My vision quickly blurred with more tears and my friend continued to try to distract me with the Honeysuckle. Once school began though, I became too distracted to think about the reality of having said goodbye to my parents for the next couple months. There were too many people to meet, too many lessons and activities to do, too much soccer to play and too much horrible food to choke down for me to think about the goodbyes.

But Monday morning was letter writing day.

At our boarding school, students were required to write a letter home once a week. Some dorms did it over the weekend but in year 6 we wrote them first-thing on monday morning in class. Pencil in hand and blank sheet before me, I froze. The gaping wound in my young life that was temporarily guazed by distractions opened up as I was forced to confront the separation from my parents. It was a heartache that is hard to describe. It felt like searing loss even though you knew you would see your parents again. A fear of no relief and a deep dull ache in your chest. Most people in boarding school feel it in different ways and it manifested differently for everyone but mine surfaced as an unstoppable flood of tears. As I wept, my teacher and my new friends tenderly tried to comfort me. I was inconsolable and I was distracting my soft-hearted friends for too long, so my teacher gently asked me to go wait in the library. My sobbing disturbed the silence of the library too, but fortunately I was the only student there. The kind Librarian sought to comfort me, yet her good-intentioned words did not soothe the pain of that first letter writing exercise.

The only successful balm was friendship.

A couple of boys who only knew me as the new kid came in to check on me at morning recess. They pitied me and brought cookies from the dining hall. As tough as I wanted to appear before my new schoolmates, in their kindness I did not feel shame for my tears. Theirs was a simple gesture but it brought me peace. I do not think that it is a coincidence that some of the boys in that library are brothers to me 20 years later even though we live thousands of miles apart. One became my best friend, we became inseparable over the years and he was the best man at my wedding.

This is not a critique nor an affirmation of boarding school. Nor should it be read as a critique of my parents or my teacher. Sure, sending me from the room as I cried sounds harsh but my teacher was actually one of my favorite teachers that I ever had and I would stand by him through any criticism. This is just a memory from my time in India and a sign of the goodness of God.

Yes, I did mean the goodness of God. I have a box of all the letters from boarding school that my mother saved. I can’t read very much without some ache returning and tears welling up, so it just sits like a paper hard drive filled with memories. But the vast majority of those memories are sweeter than Honeysuckle. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” King David said a couple thousand years ago. He had been through more than me. That box of letters, as emotion laden as they are, mark the goodness, faithfulness, and steadfast love of God who never abandoned me or my family through those years. Just like King David had Jonathan, God put relationships and friendships in my life that shaped me into who I am today, brought healing as I adjusted to boarding school and turned the saltiness of the tears into sweet Honeysuckle joy.

What do you do with your grief when you experience heartache, heartbreak or betrayal? Do you turn from God or do you turn to Him? What is your prescription for the pain? Is it food, alcohol, a social media image, medicine, drugs, sex, brooding, recklessness, hardening of the heart, light-hearted meaningless distractions or turning inward for salvation? Think it through.

I think one of God’s greatest gifts to us in this dark world is friendship. Relationships heal and strengthen and make burdens lighter. When Jesus, the Lord Himself, walked this earth He had close confidants in Peter, James and John. As a man He knew He needed friends. He called those men His friends. Can you imagine Jesus calling you His friend? To your face? Even in your shame He calls you friend. He said “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” He laid down His life for you and for me. He calls us His friends. A relationship with Jesus can heal your heart of any pain and release you from any struggle if you let Him in. And in our day to day life He has placed friends for us to lean on and they to lean on us.

If you are in a place of pain or hurt, lean on a friend. Be vulnerable and invite someone into what you are going through and walk shoulder to shoulder with them. Or maybe you are limping and they can help bear your weight as you limp along your journey. Conversely, if you see a friend in pain, reach out: text, call, talk, put a hand on their shoulder, give them a Honeysuckle or a cookie from the dining hall. Don’t always wait for them to ask because they may never do so and you will watch them collapse from a distance and only wonder what you could have done. A 20 second text or a 10 minute phone call could have an eternal effect. My friends’ simple gestures almost 20 years ago still reverberate through my life and here I am writing about it.

Do not take your friendships for granted. Lean into them and invite your loved ones to lean into you. Life is not easy but it is certainly more pleasant with companions.

Peace. And until next time, happy travels!

Seth

P.S. If you appreciate or enjoy the work I am doing at Marvelous India, feel free to say thank you by buying me a cup of chai!

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