Today I write to honor my dear friend Kris Franklin. She was a true friend who recently and suddenly died. I’m reeling with grief. My words will inevitably fall short of conveying the depth and beauty of our friendship, nor could they ever do justice to the brilliant light she was in the world, but hopefully the love we shared will come through.

I was walking in our neighborhood in Ciudad San Cristobal, Guatemala when I saw her walking alone and decided to introduce myself. It took a bit of courage on my part because she was tall, blonde and beautiful and the sight of her poised posture surfaced my insecurities. In those days I judged myself as, at best, rather plain. I didn’t know it, but soon discovered, Kris had a college degree and published books. Her husband had a mission assignment with a larger reputable organization.

Though I compared myself unfavorably to her, I needn’t have worried, my new friend did not place undue value on appearances, degrees, or social status. From the start we openly shared our fears and hopes, struggles and dreams as new evangelical missionaries with our families in Guatemala. 

I had asked God to send a friend and he sent Kris, a nearby neighbor who seemed to “get me” at every turn. It turned out she’d been praying for a friend too.

Kris was smart, funny, curious, opinionated, and unafraid to ask hard questions. We decided to walk together in our neighborhood daily. Her second grader and ours went to the same school and soon became friends. My husband and hers also found common ground, but it was our consistent daily walks and talks that bonded us. We talked about anything and everything. Sometimes our conversations were more philosophical and spiritual. But we were just as likely to explore the topic of dog breeding or Kris’ latest collaborative project with a photographer who worked with children who lived on the dump in Guatemala.

Kris’ family’s conversion to Catholicism converged with our own experiences and convictions culminating in the decision for our family to leave Guatemala and become Catholic too. But that is a story for another time.

Throughout our thirty-two-year friendship Kristine Franklin demonstrated an extraordinary passion for life. She wrote children’s books, held writers’ workshops (one of which I attended), made her own yogurt, baked bread, became a master knitter, learned to weave and spin her own wool into yarn. She also co-hosted shows on Catholic television and radio and created her own podcast.  This is only a partial list among many more accomplishments, and certainly not the ones she valued most. Instead she valued ordinary family activities, time with her husband, her children and, in recent years, her grandchildren.

Nothing satisfied Kris’s insatiable appetite for learning. She always wanted to be better, to know more. Yet she also deeply desired to exemplify the following admonition from St. Paul:

Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves,

each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others.

Philippians 2:3&4

Kris longed intensely for the Love that Never Ends.

In our long conversations over the years she shared traumatic experiences from her childhood including the death of her mom from breast cancer. There were betrayals of friendship, struggles with depression, and the heartaches that come to every family.  

She’d call and ask for prayer when she was sad, and I did the same. I knew I could count on her to be FOR me. I was FOR her too. We could go for months without talking and then spend a few hours on the phone catching up without missing a beat.

She was one of my “go-to” friends when our Evan died 15 months ago. She had known, loved and prayed for our son through his transition from Guatemala back to the U.S. as an adolescent, his high school years and military deployments, and his struggles with “brainworms” (as he called his bi-polar diagnosis). I trusted her with my grief over Evan because I was never “too emotional” or “too sentimental” or “too anything” for her. She knew intimately the journey of grief and promised she would never tell me that I should be over it no matter how long it lasted, a promise she kept.

If there is anything I’ve learned since Evan’s accident, it’s that the Mercy of God is deeper and wider and higher than we can possibly imagine. Because I know God’s Mercy in this way , it somehow feels natural and appropriate to entrust my dear friend into God’s merciful love.

Another thing I’m learning is that we need companions on the journey. I mean we desperately need each other. We need people who are FOR us and to be FOR others whether or not they are able to receive what we want to give.

Let’s keep praying and not doubt for an instant.

As Cana has been saying lately, We can do hard stuff together.