I’m reading a book of letters between John and Abigail Adams called My Dearest Friend.
John Adams had to be gone a lot during the Revolutionary War for the Constitutional Convention and Abigail had to hold down the fort at home in the Boston area. He was up to his eyeballs with long, tedious meetings and she was dealing with lying awake at night because of the sound of cannons firing nearby. He wrote the following about his experience with Congress and I wonder how much different it is now:
“I am wearied to Death with the Life I lead. The Business of the Congress is tedious, beyond Expression. …Business is drawn and spun out to immeasurable Length. I believe that if it was moved and seconded that we should come to a Resolution that three and two make five, we should be entertained with Logick and Rhetorick Law, History, Politicks, and Mathematicks, concerning the Subject for two whole Days, and then We should pass the Resolution unanimously in the Affirmative.”
He offered up advice on educating their children and gave his thoughts on the management of the property, while she kept him up to date on her thoughts about the war, what was happening locally, and the toll that illness was taking on their family and friends. Her mother died while he was out of town and she wrote meaningfully and eloquently about her grief, pouring out words of great loss, while at the same time being able to say, “Still I have many blessings left, many comforts to be thankful for and rejoice in. I am not left to mourn as one without hope. My dear parent knew in whom she had Believed…and departed the world with an easy tranquility, trusting in the merits of a Redeemer.”
She worried that perhaps all this writing about her grief was giving relief to her wounded heart at the cost of adding pain to his: “My pen is always freer than my tongue. I have wrote many things to you that I suppose I never could have talk’d.”
That’s when I knew that I was reading the words of a friend. It has ever been the way with me that things that are difficult to express out loud are easier to write on paper (or type on a screen).
C.S. Lewis said, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
Abigail Adams, friendship was born when I read your words. I look forward to meeting you in eternity.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning, my keyboard being freer than my tongue.
Lynniebeemuseoday 