Lent 2013, Day 4: Hello, Old Friend

In the morning, I told my colleague I didn’t have time to go out for lunch with him on Friday. But as he turned away from my cubicle I reconsidered. After all, it was the day before a holiday weekend, there weren’t many people in the office, and I hadn’t gone to lunch outside in weeks.

We agreed on 12:30, when his conference call would end. But then at 12:30, I took a call. We ended up not leaving until ten minutes later–and those ten minutes would bring a Holy Spirit moment.

A block and a half from work, a tall woman with dark hair we were walking by said, “Melanie?” I figured it was someone I knew from church and smiled and said, “Hi!” But then I looked again. No, not church. She said hesitantly, “Julie.” And that was when we hugged.

Julie is Julianne Hill, whom I worked with back in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Chicago. She was in town with her high school senior son, who was a twinkle in Julie and her husband Doug’s eyes the last time I saw her. She’s always been an amazing woman, and if you’d like to know more about her, check out this story she did for This American Life several years ago.

Julie and her son and their companion were in a hurry, so a hug had to suffice. But I found myself thinking of her all afternoon, including a bit of her sage advice from back when we worked together. Our boss was a jerk, which maybe helped the rest of us, especially a group of a dozen or so women, bond. We went to lunch together. We camped together. We went to the theater together. We vacationed together, sometimes along with our husbands or significant others. Julie was the one who would step back a bit and say, “Treasure this time. We won’t always work with people we like this much or do work we’ll find this interesting. Treasure it.”

Lent can be about slowing down and taking a break, however small, from the rush of life. I was reminded on Friday that when we slow down–when we make time for lunch with colleagues or when we make time to answer a call to help someone–God has a way of providing us with little moments of suprise and joy to treasure.