As I first referred to Mary as the heartbreaker, I first referred to Evelyn as the paragon. Like Mary, she, too, was an angel; if she was a paragon, it would have been for reasons that were, at least mostly, my fault. I have written before that I put the friends I made in high school up on pedestals; they had to be special, you see, because I was certain that I was not. I set four of my friends above the others, and Evelyn was one of those four.
During the summer after graduation, I talked with Evelyn a few times, and it seemed that we were becoming closer as friends. Also, that summer, I was attending a missionary prep program in my stake, and I started my first job, working as a shipping clerk for a small publishing company. In August I was becoming more and more discouraged; I couldn't seem to do anything right in the prep classes, and I experienced some difficult days at work. I think I was experiencing some opposition as the adversary tried to discourage me from serving a mission.
One Sunday in August I was sitting in the kitchen in my home, feeling as if the world were closing in around me. Suddenly I jumped up, went out to the family car, and drove up to Evelyn's house. I had but one question on my mind, did she love me? I am sure I meant that as a friend, but she would not have known that. As it turned out, she was not at home.
A few months later, after receiving my mission call, I was organizing my farewell. I asked two friends to speak in that meeting, John and Evelyn. Asking a friend to speak at your farewell is a little unusual, but if that friend is a girl, it is potentially awkward -- asking girls to sing is more traditional. It did not occur to me that those attending the meeting might think certain things regarding the girl I asked to speak.
Fast forward another few months. I was now in my first area, experiencing some adversity with my companions and an area where the work was extremely slow -- and the girl who said she would write me took a couple of months to send that first letter. In my discouragement, I reached out to some friends back home, and one of the letters I sent was to Evelyn. After a few weeks without a reply, I wrote a second letter. In one of those letters I wrote about that Sunday in August and the question, did she love me? In another I wrote that I questioned the friendship I had received.
The second letter got a response, but not the one I was hoping for. Evelyn wrote that she wanted to be helpful but that she felt I needed to understand a few things. Some of what she wrote I needed to hear, but there were other things that served to make me even more self conscious. I had felt that I lacked some social skills, but now it seemed that I was even more socially clueless than I had realized. I clearly did not understand the meaning of love, or the power of the word, and while I may not have received the love I needed growing up, I could not push that onto other people -- you certainly cannot ask a girl if she loves you.
To a certain extent I was being self-centered, but I bristled at the suggestion that I expected people to cater to me. The only thing I wanted from my missionary companions was hard work, which was exactly what we were not doing. I was there to work, but I was at the mercy first of my trainer and then of my second companion, who was senior to me, who found reasons not to work. I found that I could not apply the remedy of forgetting myself and going to work.
I bristled, also, at the idea that I did not understand the meaning of love. After all, what little had I been doing out there, I had been trying to do out of love -- everything a missionary does in the mission field should be out of love. I started writing a reply and when I had finished I had put ink on twelve pages. Alas, Evelyn, like Julie, had been right; I had not been in love with Julie and I did not understand the meaning of love or the power of the word.
Still, Evelyn gave me some of the best advice I ever received. Everyone has down times, everyone experiences feelings of inadequacy, but we are the master of our own soul. We have the power to choose how we feel, and we should choose to be confident instead of discouraged. Also, even if we don't feel great when someone ask us how we are doing, we should still say that we are great, and if we do it enough, our brain might get the hint -- in other words, fake it until you make it.
It can be easy to find fault and weakness in others, and when they ask for our help, it may seem like a good idea to inform them of our findings. There may be cases where this is appropriate, especially if the individual asks for complete, brutal honesty, but in most cases we may do more harm than good, despite our best intentions. I do not say this to criticize Evelyn; maybe she didn't need to write some of the things she did, but I did not have to internalize them in the way that I did.
I felt, at the time, that her letter was a slap upside that head that I needed, and over the next few years, any time I felt I needed another head slap, I would pull out that letter. That was my mistake, not Evelyn's; that is how she became the paragon, and it served to magnify the feelings I had in high school about my friends. They were cool, they were special, and I was anything but those things. I was quiet, plain, even socially inept, and I had many other weaknesses.
I learned a lot on my mission, and when I came home I wanted show my friends, including, and perhaps especially, Evelyn that I had changed. Instead, I found myself being unsure of how to act around my friends, afraid of being the same socially inept kid I perceived myself to be in high school. I was afraid to simply be myself because, whoever that was, had been so deeply flawed.
At the same time, it seemed as if the world I returned home to had changed. In many ways that world seemed to resemble life before high school, when I had few friends. Part of growing up is moving on; friends go their separate ways after high school, people move from place to place and from job to job. Even so, I expected a warmer greeting upon my return than I felt I ended up getting.
Making and keeping friends does not get any easier as we get older. In some ways it becomes more difficult. High school is a unique place, and what works there does not always work in other areas of life.
A few years ago an old friend joined a social media website, and when I reached out, they blocked me. As hard as that was, it did serve one purpose in showing me that at least some of my friends were not quite as special as I thought they were. In realizing that, it allowed me to also discover that there had been something special about me. I finally took all my friends, including Evelyn, down from the pedestals I had placed them on.
Only then could I truly understand that God did not just give weaknesses to me, but to everyone. He gives us weaknesses that we might be humble, and if we humble ourselves before him and exercise faith in him, he will make weak things become strong, because his grace is sufficient. Yes, I had weaknesses, but so did my friends, and if, with their weaknesses, they could be special, then so could I.
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