No Throwaway Moments

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.

—Philippians 4:12

I sat with an old friend today. She and her husband have endured unimaginable loss throughout the course of their lives and another very fresh loss in these last months.

We sat in the golden, fading light of a Chicago spring. Our kids ran around the screened porch, and the grass was impossibly green, almost glowing. She told me the particulars of that most recent loss, and she was present to it, unafraid. She spoke unflinchingly, and I saw in her a vision for how I want to live. In one of her darkest seasons, twisted with uncertainty, bruised by the words of former friends, she sat with me, present and unafraid. She looked in my eyes and told me funny and sweet things about her kids, asked me about myself. She wasn’t shut down, going through the motions. She was right there with me, with her kids, in all the glory and pain and mess and beauty of a spring night.

My friend knows there are no throwaway moments—not when it’s easy, or hard, or boring, or you’re waiting for something to happen. Throw those moments away and you will look back someday, bereft at what you missed, because it’s the good stuff. It’s all there is.