Living with Mystery

“Trust in Him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before Him;

God is a refuge for us.”

—Psalm 62.8 ESV

Sometimes you have those moments in life where you stop and think, “That’s gonna make a great story someday.” The emphasis, of course, is on someday; at the time, it often feels . . . confusing, ridiculous, unwanted. It’s hard to understand what’s going on in the first place, let alone why God allowed it. It can take a long time before you’re able to make sense of it all. Sometimes, it never does make sense, and you just have to be content to live with mystery. 

Here’s one of my stories.

Growing up, I always looked forward to the day when I’d have a home and family of my own. I took it for granted as a given; of course one day I’d get married and have kids. So I watched most of my friends get married and settle down; I watched their babies turn into toddlers and then into teenagers. Meanwhile, I also watched the population of single males in my church dwindle down to a handful of sixty-somethings and a young man who was born around the time I myself became a teen. Things continued in this vein for several years, until one summer, after having shot family photos for some friends of mine, I spontaneously decided to try online dating and see what happened. 

By the grace of God I made it to, and through, my first coffee rendezvous without having a heart attack—after which the man removed himself from the field. Gentlemen two and three (coffee and ice cream, respectively) were nice, but . . . 

And then there was Fella Number Four.

Our conversation had been fun; we both loved old-time radio programs, classic films, crime novels and literature, and all things English. His replies came so slowly, though, that I wondered whether he wasn’t actually enjoying our exchanges. I thought I’d wrap things up and move on, but then a new message from him landed in my inbox: Now that I’m back from deployment, let’s figure out a time we can meet and get to know each other better. Talk about surprises. I’d noticed that his profile said he was in the military, but it hadn’t occurred to me that his slow responses were because he was deployed somewhere. Our exchanges picked up from there (although they were never rapid-fire) and we arranged to get coffee at my city’s art museum. When the day arrived, I was excited, but without the heart-pounding anxiety or existential dread I’d felt leading up to my previous rendezvous. I even felt … calm. I breezed through the side door of the coffee shop, then took a deep breath and looked around. 

The shop was busy with twenty-somethings and elderly art lovers, and I didn’t immediately see anyone who looked like the photos I’d seen. Then, I spotted a man seated by himself at a café table near the window, his back toward me. Though there was nothing about him that screamed “member of the armed forces awaiting an assignation,” something in the crisp lines of his dark hair made me think I’d found who I was looking for. I took another deep breath and walked over.

And what do you know? Our face-to-face conversation was fun, too. We covered a lot of ground—from European travel and a detailed explanation of his job to The Screwtape Letters and Dorothy Sayers’s essay Are Women Human? to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. Of course, there were the occasional awkward pauses or sheepish smiles of two shy strangers trying to figure out if they could become friends, but before I knew it nearly three hours had flown by. When we stood up to say goodbye, he said Let me know if you’d like to do something like this again. I almost thought I’d heard wrong; that hadn’t happened on my three previous outings. As I walked to my car I was buoyant, and I already couldn’t wait to see Fella Number Four again.

It turns out that military officers are busy people, and when they’re based an hour away from your city it further complicates planning. We were discussing ideas for meeting up again when, on the other side of the world, things started happening—things that made global headlines. The pauses before his replies got longer. I started following the news assiduously, looking for signs that the U.S. might become involved; based on what my new-found friend had told me of his work, I knew any action could have implications for him. Any action could have implications I didn’t want to imagine. 

It had been a week or so since I’d last heard from Fella Number Four. Between wondering how he was doing and constantly checking The Wall Street Journal’s updates of the situation, my stomach felt about as tense as it had when I tried to stand on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and look down to the bottom. But the news finally broke—the U.S. had acted. Everyone started wondering what was coming next. I was so keyed up that I felt like I was going to explode. 

So I started praying, out loud. I told God everything I was feeling—about what was going on in the world, about what it meant for my friend, about the excitement and uncertainty I felt and how I needed wisdom. I asked Him to make it clear whether it would be a good thing for this friendship to continue, or not. About thirty minutes later, I got a message from Fella Number Four—he was exhausted and busy, but fine. My heartrate slowed. And I felt it was such a kindness of God to send me an answer to my prayer.

Another week or so passed. Everyone was still on high alert, but the world had not yet ended. My friend was still busy (which was completely understandable, given the circumstances), so our exchanges had been pretty brief. And I started to worry about something else. His online profile had stated he was a Christian and that he wanted to continue growing in his faith, but we hadn’t actually discussed what he meant by that. Warranted or not, by now I liked Fella Number Four a lot, but I knew things couldn’t continue if we didn’t agree on a life that was centered on Christ. So I asked what it meant to him.

I knew to expect several days before he replied, but the wait was agonizing.

Finally, I opened my mouth again and told God all about it.

I asked Him for wisdom and clarity on what He would have me do, or not do. I asked Him, if it was not His will for the friendship to continue, to reveal that to my friend and let him be the one to bring things to an end, as I didn’t think I could. About half an hour later, my friend sent me a message in answer to my question about his faith. It was a good answer. I had a hard time keeping the smile from my face. And two answers to heartfelt prayers, answers that I had had no power to bring about? I felt almost giddy.

A couple days after that, I unexpectedly got another message: He was being assigned to a base several hours away from my city, and, considering how busy his job kept him, didn’t think it would be fair to either of us to try to make something work long distance. 

I understood, even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I asked if he’d be interested in staying “normal” friends in order to talk about books and movies and our other common interests; he said he’d enjoy that. I asked if email would be a good method, and sent my address it case it was—then no response. 

Two weeks went by without a peep, and I concluded he hadn’t meant it after all. The news cycle moved on. I had coffee with someone else, who was interested in meeting again . . . but I wasn’t; I was going through withdrawal. I wanted to take to my bed like a Jane Austen heroine and go into a decline. 

One evening I was home alone, making dinner, and I just couldn’t stay bottled up anymore. While I sautéed some onions I gave God an earful, pouring out all my confusion and embarrassment. I remembered that I’d asked Him to have my friend end things, if that’s what would be for the best, and I realized He’d answered that prayer, too. 

I put my dinner on a plate, then noticed a new message: Email would be great. I’ll respond that way now. Sure enough, soon afterward I received an email from him.

“God, You’re so weird sometimes,” I prayed, as tears rolled down my cheeks. I responded to the email a couple hours later. And that was the last I heard.

I felt a lot of things in the weeks and months that followed. I wondered if I’d unconsciously offended him, done something wrong; I wondered whether he was just “being nice” the whole time and hadn’t really wanted to see me again or remain friends. I wondered if I wasn’t fit enough or adventurous enough, whether I was too smart or too opinionated or had insulted all his favorite books. I wondered how many of my ideas about him were really true, and how much was just what I wanted to believe. But mostly, I wanted to know what it had all been for—why had God allowed it? Why had He seemingly answered my prayers in such a dramatic fashion? Had He really answered them, or was I deluding myself there, too? What was it for, God?

God has not neatly dropped an answer in my lap. But, as time has passed, distance has given me some perspective. God, of course, knows all the details of my story as well as everyone else’s; what might He have been saving me from? What work had He prepared for me that I couldn’t have done if my mind and heart had been otherwise occupied? What did He want me to learn? 

Perhaps it was all just because He knew a certain military officer in a certain role needed a certain thing prayed for him. Possibly God wanted to stir my heart to pray for friends with service connections, or for world events, or for other circumstances clearly beyond my control. Perhaps Fella Number Four was never the point at all—but learning to pour out my heart to God and seeing His eagerness to answer was. Maybe it was to remind me just how deeply God is Good, to reorder my loves around the One whose steadfast Love never ceases. Or maybe it was to remind me how completely worthy of all my trust, all my fondest hopes and dreams and desires, He really is.

Perhaps I will never know the full ending to this story. I sometimes wonder whether, one day in Heaven, I’ll see my former friend and we’ll laugh together and say Wasn’t that the craziest thing? And wasn’t what God did through it amazing? 

But I do know that God is Good, and because He is Good, I can trust that everything He does is for my good, whether it looks like my idea of good or not. My life is still uncomfortably full of unknowns, but, little by little, I am learning to live with mystery. Perhaps that’s what it was all for, after all.

The featured image, “Campanula In Welsh Stone Wall,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Amelia Freidline

Amelia M. Freidline lives in the Kansas City suburbs with her parents and a wee terrier named for the tallest mountain in Scotland. She studied journalism at the University of Kansas and has worked as a copy editor in food media throughout her professional career; she has also edited poetry collections for Bandersnatch Books and is an occasional contributor to The Rabbit Room’s poetry Substack. On her own Substack, Dispatches to Jack, she writes about classic literature, classic films, and the other various interests of a nostalgia-riddled anachronist. She’s also a poet, a gardener, a photographer, and a wielder of butter. Amelia has been called a G.K. Chesterton fangirl and the queen of non sequiturs, and if she were a cookie she’d undoubtedly be shortbread. She loves Jesus because He loved her first.

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