Falling in Love: The Backstory, Part 3

(Didn’t catch what happened first? Read  Falling in Love: The Back-Story Part 1 ….and then Part 2!)

This is the third  and final installment of the ‘falling in love, the back-story’ series. It’s about love, lost friendship, and the mysterious way faith works. Where it ends the real love story begins.

It’s hard to say why my friendship with Margerete ended– it ended way before Benson and I began. I’m still not clear about it, and perhaps because I felt/feel such a lack of closure around her and I (and simply because I miss her),  she appears in my dreams quite often, even as I sleep in her Ex-husband’s arms.

In any case, sometime near my third trimester of pregnancy, after I had moved home to Oregon, away from the loneliness of So Cal and back into the safety and comfort of my parents, she was no longer my best friend. And losing her, meant I also lost my friendship and connection to Benson.

I don’t blame Margerete for her decision; I don’t understand what was going on in her life enough to find her at fault for anything.  What I do know is that I went through a very difficult time in my pregnancy and I leaned too much on her for support.  I was too clouded by my own despair to see hers: her marriage was ending and I, her one-time best friend, had no idea.

After Lucca was born,  I continued to reach out to her, hoping to reconnect and salvage her friendship. Coming out of my darkness with the birth of my son, I was suddently present, if only peripherally, to the one she was suffering. I wanted to be there for her, to be filled in on her own demons so I could fight them with her. I wanted  to share with her the joy of my baby, to thank her for being there for me that day in R.E.I.

Every attempt I made was in vein except one. She replied back to an email I had sent with picture attachments of Lucca. She asked that I stop contacting her.

She said Benson and her were going through a separation. He was in the U.K, working, and she had moved home to her mother’s. She didn’t think she would be joining him in England…ever. She said she was going through a difficult time and had to figure out what she wanted for herself, and that even though she was happy for me and for the health of my son, she couldn’t deal with expending any more emotional energy.

Later I learned from Benson that I wasn’t the only one she had cut out of her life during that time. It felt horrible all the same. Regardless what she felt about me, I loved her, like a sister. Even as life went on, I missed her, worried about her, never stopped thinking about her and wishing her well.

Almost a year passed. Lucca was about to turn one. I was content in my life as a single mommy. A wonderful net of support had weaved around me, with God, my parents, my sisters and new friends, some even single moms like me.

But one summer eve I felt a desperate prayer arrise in me to hear from Margerete and Benson. What were their lives like now? Had they found the happiness in each other and in life I knew they deserved?

I went to bed that night in meditations of gratitude for their past friendship and presence in my life. I remembered with joy and thanksgiving the time I spent in their home when I first found out I was pregnant, and the prayer Benson spoke over me and my Lucca, then still in my belly.  Before I fell asleep, I was filled with faith and a feeling of the holy spirit over me.  I just knew I was going to be reconnected with Margarete, and I thanked God for answering that prayer.

When I found that email sitting in my in-box the next morning, I felt like a child on Christmas day. I was a little girl, coming to the tree and seeing a beautiful present there waiting for her. Wrapped it looked identical to the gift she had asked for, unwrapped, it was something else unexpected–close, but no toast– as if St. Nick had gotten his messages crossed.

The email that I received was not from Margarete, but from Benson.  And knowing what I know now about the way the rest of the story goes–about how Benson and I reconnected, about how we eventually fell in love, and chose to be a family together, I giggle at the magic and miracle that happened that night in my prayer.

When I get stubborn about faith in my life now, I need to return here and reflect:

God may not give us verbatim what we ask for, but maybe he gives us something better.

This is where the falling in love backstory ends… and the real story begins.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Falling in Love: The Back-Story, Part 2
• Falling in Love: The Backstory Part 2
• Who’s heard of Hulu?
• Richard Meux Benson, Presbyter and Religious, 1915