The Day That Cost Me My Friend

This is a painful post for me to write. It was painful when it happened on June 26th of this year, and it's painful now. It was a day that cost me one of my best friends.

Do you ever experience a cross and you just weep and thank God for it while at the same time struggling under its crushing weight? Like the experience of redeeming suffering and joy that is simultaneously co-mingling, like blood and water, with the pain of loss? I imagine this is what we feel when someone close to us dies while we hope for their eternal reward--the intense and hole-like feeling of grief existing in tandem with the joy of anticipation for their happy death.

But my friend didn't die...I just lost him forever. Let me rewind a bit.

In June the Holy Spirit came to collect on a prayer of abandonment I had made in the car--somewhere between Route 322 and Baltimore Pike on the way to work one day last year--when I had earnestly prayed, "Lord, I know the harvest is great but the laborers are few. I want to be a worker in your vineyard. Here I am. Send me."

Be careful when you pray, because the Lord hears all prayers, and ones like this, I think, catch his attention, and He takes you at your word.

On June 15th Joseph Sciambra, who many of my Catholic friends know, posted on his Facebook page that he was looking for volunteers to help him in his outreach to the LGBT community for San Francisco's Pride parade, which draws over one million people to the Bay area. I had only gotten acquainted with Joseph and his ministry not long before that, when I discovered his post on his webpage "Hell Is For Real" about his near-death experience and was moved and shaken. I friended him on Facebook, and so see the things he posts. Two of his friends who he had usually counted on for help in passing out rosary bracelets and cards with his website in the massive crowd had backed out, leaving him alone. I saw the post right before I left work.

It was around this same geographic area--in the car driving home from work, on Baltimore Pike near Route 322--that I can only describe as the Holy Spirit 'convicting' me with what felt like an electric shock (kind of like a mild heart attack, but not painful) as I was driving. You know how when the call of God comes it isn't always audible words, yet you know what is being said? Well, the message I got from this electric current to my soul was: "You go."

Now, I'm kind of a literalist and it gets me in trouble sometimes. I'm not a big over-thinker. I read that evening in scripture of a companion of Paul's, Silas, who joined Paul after Barnabas and Mark broke with him, and I was convinced God was saying, "I need you to be Joseph's Silas." There were many people offering prayers on his page, and saying they wish they could help but couldn't for one reason or another. And I kept thinking to myself, "please, somebody else step up." But after a while checking on the computer that evening, it was clear he was still in need. So, without thinking, I sent Joseph an email saying I would go. He dissuaded me, thanking me but saying I would never make it in time and accommodations would be impossible. I thought that was that, but I felt pushed to write again, saying that as long as he was ok with it, I would make it happen. I didn't know how--we were scheduled to be on vacation the week right before Pride, and I would be driving back home eight hours that Friday. I would have to find a flight that left either the next day or, even crazier, Sunday morning, in which case I would go straight from the airport to the parade downtown. It just did not seem possible.

I reached out to a few faithful friends for guidance and prayer, all who confirmed that this indeed seemed like the Holy Spirit working and that I had to go if at all possible. On June 18th, we were on vacation in Massachusetts that week, and I couldn't stop feeling this pressure, this inner urge, to obey, as crazy as it seemed. I was checking flights and couldn't find anything less than $750, and everything was booking up with breakneck speed. Also, the times were lousy. I prayed and spoke frankly to the Lord, "You are going to have to make a way if you want me to do this, because I just don't see how it is possible." I was waffling about the cost but my friend urged me to step out in faith and bite the bullet, as long as it wouldn't put us in dire straights financially (which it wouldn't have). Sure enough, against all odds, a flight appeared that I hadn't seen previously, with the exact times I needed to make it work: leave home 3am Sunday morning, get into San Francisco an hour before the start of the parade, and fly out on a red eye that evening. I booked the ticket, and once I did, the Lord took it from there.

I wrote about the day which you can read here, so I won't repeat myself. My friend published my reflections from the day on June 25th, written at SFO waiting for my flight home, and tagged me in the post which she shared. I figured I was in so deep with the Holy Spirit by this point that I wasn't really thinking about any possible repercussions. Stepping out in obedience to this crazy proposal had reinforced itself, it was exciting to see God working, and many graces that would flow were as yet unseen at that point.

The next evening, on June 26th, I received a txt from one of my closest friends, J. We had been friends since college. I still remember the day in 1999, sitting on the curb on Beaver Avenue, eating a slice of pizza together, when he shared that he was gay. I didn't know, didn't have much of a sense of these things (faulty gay-dar, I guess). It didn't seem a big thing back then. We went to parties together, visited each other after college, went to the clubs, hiking, and just, well, being friends. Even attended Mass together a few times in DC at a gay-friendly parish. I was always cognizant of it, but it was just a non-thing.

It wasn't until the Obergefell ruling that things got a little bit more...uncomfortable. I was slowly moving in a different direction in my faith, from liberal Catholicism to orthodoxy, and at my kitchen table, after our bike ride, asked me point blank, "What are your thoughts on gay marriage?" He had been dating a man, and maybe he wanted to know where I stood, seeing the direction my faith was moving should they get 'married' and it came time for invitations. I tried to sidestep, but knowing he deserved a truthful answer, said with only light conviction that I can't get behind it, that marriage should be between a man and a woman and my faith precludes any kind of support for such a union. He respected that as much as he could, but I could tell our friendship was beginning to go the way of cognitive dissonance.

He was the one I was thinking of most during this whole experience with Joseph. He had seen my story, as I knew he would. I could sense the hurt and feeling of betrayal in his words of his text. All those years. Did I always feel this way? My heart kind of stopped; though I knew this was a possibility, I didn't want to go through it. I cried, with my wife by my side. God was doing something, was pruning and it was painful. I loved J, my friend. He told me he had to unfriend me, for his own self-respect, that we were still friends, but I knew things had changed and there was no going back. He would never speak to me again, and we would never see each other. It was a kind of death, one that holds to this day, and it hurt like hell.

While I have no regrets about this endeavor, it drove home to me--really, for the first time, since until then I had been trying to "have my cake and eat it too," that every choice comes with a cost. Christ lays it out, encourages us to count before building (Lk 14:28), that he came to divide, not bring peace (Mt 10:34), that even our own father we cannot turn back to bury (Lk 9:59).

I miss my friend dearly, and I pray for him, but I know there is no going back to the way things were before. We have to be true to ourselves, and accept what comes with that. That's the cross. Just like when you prune a bush, new growth comes back anew, I have made new dear friends, graces have abounded, and my faith has been renewed...but at a cost. And I would do it all again.