Honestly, Sandie

The first gemstone. The first friendship. The first crack in how I understood trust.

Lapis Lazuli spent thousands of years sitting next to kings.

Not because it was the most expensive stone.

Not because it was the rarest.

Because it was trusted.

Kings wore it.

Priests carried it.

Advisors kept it close.

It was the stone of wisdom, truth, and the people who knew things.

Which is exactly why she’s Lapis Lazuli.

If the church had an archive room, she was it.

Need the backstory?

Ask Lapis.

Need to know why something happened in 1997?

Ask Lapis.

Need context before you accidentally say something stupid in a meeting?

Definitely ask Lapis.

She knew everything.

Not gossip.

History.

There is a difference.

And if you’ve spent enough time in organizations, you know exactly what I mean.

The people who traffic in gossip are exhausting.

The people who carry history are invaluable.

Lapis carried history.

I met her sometime around 2010.

Back when my kids were little.

Back when I thought adults knew what they were doing.

Back when I thought church politics was something that happened in other churches.

Again.

Cute.

I know.

We became friends.

Real friends.

The kind where years disappear before you notice.

The kind where your husbands become friends too.

The kind where your lives overlap so completely that eventually you stop remembering where the friendship started because it’s just always been there.

Lapis was smart.

Steady.

Dependable.

Predictable.

The kind of person who showed up exactly as herself every single time.

And maybe that’s why one sentence hit me so hard.

Not because she changed.

Because she didn’t.

Because she was exactly the same person she’d always been.

One afternoon she casually explained that because of her role, she couldn’t keep information from the senior pastor.

I remember nodding.

I remember understanding the sentence.

I remember not understanding the implications.

Those are different things.

Because suddenly I wasn’t looking at my friend differently.

I was looking at the room differently.

The room before that sentence and the room after that sentence were not the same room.

Same chair.

Same office.

Same friendship.

Different understanding.

And that’s the funny thing about trust.

Most people think trust breaks.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it just gets measured differently.

Years later, when everything was falling apart, I called Lapis.

I was crying.

She was listening.

And somewhere in the middle of that conversation I said something I’ve never forgotten.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck there.”

I didn’t mean the office.

I didn’t mean the building.

I meant the position.

The impossible assignment of trying to love people while serving a system that sometimes asks for your loyalty first.

Maybe I was right.

Maybe I was wrong.

I still don’t know.

What I do know is that I told her:

“This is how you lose a friend.”

And she told me:

“You’re not going to lose me.”

The hardest part of getting older is realizing that sometimes nobody is lying.

Sometimes everybody means exactly what they say.

And life changes anyway.

That’s what happened with Lapis.

No explosion.

No betrayal.

No dramatic ending.

Just two people standing in different places than they used to.

Which somehow hurts more.

Because there is nothing to blame.

Only something to grieve.