So far away

Tonight my mind is somewhere else. To be more specific, it's on the campus of Wheaton College, in a chapel pew, waiting for a good friend's senior violin recital to begin. I was at the first performance of his college career and am missing his most important and possibly last. Sometimes it's hard to be thousands of miles away.

I got to know Erik because – oddly enough – he was my chapel buddy. At Wheaton, chapel three times a week is required, and there's assigned seating to make sure you're there. (Yes, they actually have people in the balcony checking seats.) Every semester they change the seating arrangement, but that fall semester, we were arranged by street address. Since Erik's house is literally a few blocks away from the condo my sister lived in that year, we were neighbours. Erik was a freshman music ed major, I a senior English major. Not a lot in common. But, as it turned, out, he joined a community service group that spent time once a week in a low-income children's hospital in south Chicago... the same ministry in which I'd participated as a freshman!

We hit it off, I'm not sure why. It's not like we were ever close buddies, but when our seats changed second semester, we still got together for lunch or coffee occasionally, and Erik still told me in advance about his performances. We hung out in completely different crowds, but we were still friends. Even after I graduated, I showed up for his open recitals (but always had to leave early to get to Chemistry class at a different school).

Last year, when he gave his junior recital, there was no way I could attend. I'd moved to California by then and had just been in Wheaton a month earlier, not knowing when Erik's recital would be. My friend and former roommate Megan, who was still in Wheaton at the time, knew I was disappointed, So she called me up to surprise me, took her cell phone into the recital, put on the speakerphone, and I was deathly silent while listening to Erik's violin. It was one of the sweetest things anyone's every done for me. (Thanks again, Megan!)

But this year, it's a senior recital, much more glamourous than a junior recital, and I must miss it completely. In fact, I'm going to sleep right through it. And that breaks my heart.

But I'm where God wants me to be, and that will have to be my comfort tonight.