Honestly, Sandie

Gemstones 20/30

Chrysoberyl is a hard stone. Not a little hard. Ridiculous hard. Sitting at an 8.5 on the Mohs scale, it lives right under sapphire and diamond, which is basically gemstone code for, “Good luck breaking me.” Most chrysoberyl is yellow-green, but its rarest variety, alexandrite, is famous for changing color. Green in daylight. Red or purple under warm indoor light. Same stone. Different light. Different story.

That is where this one starts.

I met Chrysoberyl through her kids. Her oldest started showing up first, playing drums and finding his place. Then she came with the man she was dating, and then the rest of the family followed. Four kids, five kids, enough kids that I stopped counting and started assuming there would always be another one somewhere needing a ride, a snack, or a schedule. Eventually she landed in youth, then on the video team, and then she became one of my go-to people.

I saw leadership in her before she wanted the title. I kept trying to hand her more because she had the thing you cannot train into people: care. Cameras can be taught. Character has to walk in already packed. She was thoughtful, steady, dependable, and good with people. I wanted her to lead because I believed she could build a team, not just fill a spot.

Our friendship had a Starbucks. Not a poetic Starbucks. An actual Starbucks. The one in town we called ours because that is where we met, talked, processed, laughed, complained, and untangled whatever circus was currently on fire. During COVID, when we could not sit inside because the whole world had lost its mind and apparently chairs were illegal, we still grabbed coffee, walked across the parking lot, and sat in the grass nearby. That is commitment. Or caffeine dependency. Probably both.

We talked about parenting, work, marriage, church, leadership, friendships, kids, questions, all of it. Deep thoughts. Dumb thoughts. Heavy thoughts. The kind of conversations where you think, “Okay, this person gets it.” I trusted that.

Then the conversations got heavier. She was frustrated too. She didn’t know where she fit anymore either. She said things that made me believe we were staring at the same mess, asking the same questions, and trying to find language for the same discomfort. I asked her outright why she stayed. She said her husband was growing there, and she would stay forever if that meant he kept growing.

I could respect that. I did respect that.

Then spring came, and there she was in an Easter promo video. Not quietly staying. Not simply supporting her husband. On screen. Representing the thing we had spent months talking through on lawns and over coffee. That landed hard. The camera wasn’t the problem. The contradiction was.

So I sent the text.

Not cute. Not soft. Not wrapped in a little ministry bow with a side of “praying for you.” I said the thing because pretending there wasn’t a whole elephant sitting between us would have been fake, and fake has never been my spiritual gift.

She said I was cold. She said I wasn’t the Sandie she knew.

That one did the damage.

Because after years of coffee, kids, church, cameras, parking-lot grass, and all those long conversations, if she thought I was the kind of woman who would smile around a contradiction that big, then she didn’t know me. She knew the version of me that kept showing up with a shovel.

Chrysoberyl does not change because it is confused. It changes because the light changes. Same stone. Different room. Different color.

That friendship taught me the ugly version of that lesson.

Sometimes you do not lose someone because the whole thing was fake. Sometimes you lose them because the light shifts and you finally see what was sitting there the entire time.

We dug for years.

Then I stopped digging around it.

That is what buried us.