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The Exquisite Pain of Missing You
printer friendly versionby Dwight Ozard
10/06/2004

Dear friends: Every now and then, in the face of heart-broken cynicism and wrestling with all things hopeful, I get a note that brings me back to the center of things….

Such is what follows…. Sigh.

It makes me yearn for something like the faith of a child…. If only. But before you scroll down to read it, please try to understand how grateful I am that there is anyone in the world I can trust.

I can't begin to say how utterly gleeful I am that, just by virtue of the fact that you are on this website reading this, that you might be my friend.

In times like these--when time itself can seem an extravagance--there is nothing more valuable—or better—than a friend you can count on.

While I may gripe about how short we are on cash (or bone marrow that works), I am obscenely wealthy in friendship.

And so I share this note with you, to send this little testament of faith to those whom I (without reservation, fear or doubt), absolutely love and trust.

Some of you I see you every week, some every few months or so, some maybe once a year, some only every few years and some of you I know only as an email address. But regardless, whenever I see your name and think of you, I am filled with the pleasure of your company, however I've experienced it, and then overcome by the fact that of just how much I miss you.

At the beginning, somewhere in the depths of his wild imaginations, God birthed the notion of friendship and then gifted it to us--giving us the almost limitless, ecstatic joy of finding ourselves together in celebration of all things good (guttural and godly alike), and in that celebration a sense of the nearly unbearable yet exquisite pain of missing you.

Isn’t that the best????

And yes, I miss you.

May we, together or alone, find something like the faith of this child.

Dwight

-----Original Message-----

Sent: summer, 2004 4:10 PM
To: dozard@comcast.net
Subject: I'll keep praying for you.

Dear Dwight

My name is ****. I am nine years old. You don't really know me but your Mom and Dad know me and your Mom and Dad really know my Mom. I have been praying for you every night at bedtime since I was told about you having cancer. I know that God hears all the prayers that are being prayed.

I know that God will stay close to you in everything that you and your body will have to go through. I pray that you will feel better soon. I will always keep you in my bedtime prayers asking God to heal you body.

Dwight Ozard is a writer, speaker and management consultant known across North America as a passionate advocate and agitator for relevant, redemptive, playful and frequently irreverent Christian cultural engagement and social "action."