Friend not Known
© 1999 Don Rogers
Just before I was to begin leading a retreat workshop event for young women, a moment that I faced with some anxiety, a stranger came to me and asked if I had a moment for conversation. She had something she wanted to tell me.
I said yes and she told me she knew me as the teacher and friend of her sister. I could not remember much about the one of whom she spoke. My student, yes, not very memorable, nothing to stand out about our relationship.
She told me that in some recent years her sister had been engaged in serious therapy with a psychiatrist as she worked to integrate back into one a set of "split personalities." These had come into existence as she suffered from some unremembered severe early childhood trauma. The personalities were varied and, at times, fearsome.
But, she went on, her sister also told her therapist and her sister that there was in the midst of all these fractured parts of herself an "imaginary friend" who gave her assurance in her distress.
Her friend was known to her by my name and they both knew that I was once and again a conduit of God's grace.
I wonder how many times we who teach have become such a conduit unbeknownst to ourselves.