In the movie Shadowlands about the live and love of C.S. Lewis, there is a scene where Jack introduces Joy to a colleague of his, a one Christopher Riley. This particular colleague happens does not care very much for the world and stories of Narnia Jack penned. When Joy unknowingly asks Professor Riley if has read The Chronicles, he replies that he has not but that Jack reads him excerpts of them as “tests of friendship.”

So, dear friends, it is here that I give you my first test of friendship. Reading being my great passion, there is too much good not to share. Ironically, this one is from Jack too.

“I have always been able to pray for the other dead, and I still do, with some confidence. But when I try to pray for H., I halt. Bewilderment and amazement come over me. I have a ghastly sense of unreality, of speaking into a vacuum about a nonentity.

The reason for this difference is only too plain. You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

Jack is sharing his feelings about losing his wife. I’m reading his little book A Grief Observed where they are collected. So far, per this example, they eerily reflect my own feelings about losing my Mom.

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