Open Letter to My Friend Aaron

Aaron, I have known you since fifth grade when we met at Jason and Adam's seventh grade football game at the old Rabbits stadium, Bivins Trice. Those were the days. I remember showing you under the stands through a breach in the chain-linked fence at the far end of the stands. It was your first time down there, and I showed you how to get down to find those little plastic footballs that had fallen between seats and under the bleachers.

You have always been the most articulate, thorough, and thoughtful guy around... even hands down the most humble and kind, though it's ironic to me to know that so many of the people who read these blogs don't know you in those ways.

Anyhow, in C-X Debate, you were clearly the legitimate one. I was full of gas the vast majority of the time. Even after I spent fourteen days, eleven hours a day, studying about the U.S. foreign defense policies with Russia, while you were at home playing basketball, somehow it continued to be you, your combination of intellect, prior knowledge, sharp articulation of the facts, and wit that ruled both our duo and, often, our opponents.

I have always looked up to you. That is meant, of course, literally in reference to those years when you were several inches taller than me, when you were so confidently telling us how you would would even progressively gain far more height through the years to come, in accordance with your Dad's medical "prophecy." And, it is meant figuratively about everything else: the fact that you were the leader, or at least one of the leaders, of the very large pack of cool kids in elementary school who would go play Nerf Turbo football together after lunch and, in the off-season, a little "Union vs. Confederacy" Civil War action; you were also, despite being cool, clearly one of the most intelligent and kind students in the entire school, all the way through junior high and high school, and into college at ETBU; you dated multiple Mandy's in junior high before meeting and falling in love with my cousin Joni in seventh grade, earning a song written about you by Matt and Will, "Aaron, OH Aaron, it looks like Mandy lost your love again, but that's okay (repeat)"; you were our better half as C-X Debate partners; you were the leader in every aspect of leadership for our band, Fishers of Men; and you not only taught me many things about life, relationships, and theology, but you have loved me like a brother in so many ways that I will never again remember and others that I will never forget.

Honestly, I would have never guessed as a fifth grader, a seventh grader, a sophomore, senior, or freshman college student, that I would ever get to a place in life where I would disagree with you much about anything except how to arrange your bedroom (which I would continue to clean and rearrange for you, even though you're married...because she's my cousin, and I am just cool like that...if not for the fact that you now live in Louisville and I in Seattle, strangely, rather than East Texas). These last few years it has become increasingly dissonant in my conscience and memory, this way we have polarized in some of our ways of thinking.

Don't you forget that I'm the one who bought you Desiring God, your first John Piper book, when we lived in Feagin Hall together our freshman year in that neat little basement dorm room for your nineteenth birthday. I like that little fact because it gives me some sense of pride that, however the many influences on your thinking, somehow that one random book I gave you played some small insignificant role in your passionate beginnings as a deeply Reformed theologian. Memories like that will always be meaningful to me, if for no other reason than reminding me that, even in the most incidental ways, somehow I have mattered to certain people in this life. Yes, when Aaron O'Kelley becomes a famous NBA basketball player, I would tell myself with sincere belief in you about this, because I felt you wanted it, he will remember me, and I will have mattered to him.

I actually found myself jealous for your friendship at times. I remember in elementary school not really knowing this Clint Crowder character and being envious of the wit that so casually played out between you. I wanted to be able to create comic books with you, and I wanted to be in Mrs. I. Davis' classroom with you; yet, he was, and I wasn't. Our freshman year of high school, Hayden desperately wanted to be your C-X Debate partner, and she was obviously the rational choice, when it came to doing what was right for the U.I.L. teams, what she wanted, what Mrs. T. probably wanted, and my guess is that it was what you were leaning towards wanting too. She was much sharper than me as a speaker, thinker, and debater. I pleaded with you to take me as your partner because I imagined all the fun times we would have together and how cool I would be in that role, not because I had any real passion for the event, the subject areas we would cover, or the responsibilities that would ensue. Yet you chose me, gritting your teeth, disappointing Hayden, with hesitancy, I'm sure, but you chose me. Thank you for that.

You were my college roommate right up to about a month before you married my cousin. You endured the silliness of me being upset at you in junior high because when we went downstairs in the middle of the night for a snack, I thought the chocolate milk pouring onto the counter and floor (which I was accidentally pouring there because I couldn't see in the dark well enough to pour it into our glasses!), was you making some strange noise. I was emphatic that you be quiet so as not to wake my parents, and when we flipped that light on and realized it was the chocolate milk making all the noise, we laughed so hard, it was a miracle we didn't have an anurism. You came by that night your Dad gave you the Sunfire on your sixteenth birthday to drive me around in your new ride. You never came down on me too hard for being immature and short-sighted about girls I dated ("I really think she's the one this time!"). ;)

Since we don't live together anymore... or even near each other... you're not around to rub off on me anymore. Whatever the reason, I have developed some basic foundational values that have, in large part, re-determined my theological stances on various issues of faith and life. I have let these host of values guide a reconstruction of my doctrinal perspectives, and I am very clear on the fact that, from your perspective, this is a backward and dangerous method of constructing one's worldview. I would argue that Scripture has deeply informed my worldview by virtue of the fact that the meta-story and gospel truths of Jesus Christ have been embedded into my memory and etched into my sense of discernment and reasoning. Yet I know that you would argue, wisely, that any worldview that is not fully grounded on the foundation of Scripture is a house built on the sand. The rain here in Seattle is sure to wash me clear away, eh?

I am certainly not an advanced theologian, and my hermeneutical methodology is less methodological than I would like everyone to believe about me. But, I know most people see through that facade easily enough, most of all you, one who has known me and not just the mystery of me. We all know, deep down, that we're not as mysterious as we'd like to think we are, but I couldn't even pretend to be that person of mystery in the face of the level of familiarity that a friend like me has with a friend like you.

Let me just make some things clear before the fog of this entry settles into the status quo of our typical rants and dialogues: I mostly just write posts for the mere reason of having friends read something I've written; I mostly only comment on your blogs so that you might be more likely to then visit my blog, because I've probably just written a new post... or I just want your attention... not because I have, or think I have, anything clever to say; and though my theological and doctrinal biases and perspectives are thoughtful and sincere, they are always, to the degree at which I am blinded, ignorant, and/or lazy, myopic, and compared with the degree at which I value your friendship, meaningless.

Call me a liberal, but your community, your friendship, mean far more to me than my opinions (okay, okay, I'm clearly making myself sound more humble-minded than I really am). And, I know that you, though you would provide a disclaimer that nothing, not even our friendship, could stand between you and the version of the gospel that you uphold (as opposed to my version), at the end of the day, I believe that neither of us will actually let anything keep us from truly loving the other, even if we never even talk to each other on the phone anymore, due to the convenience and trap of blogmania. This, to me... this sense of will and vulnerability in everyday life, choosing always the marrow of good, relationship, community, and perservering with others in the experience of expressing faith through love... is God's way of bringing each of us, by our varied vehicles, from our distant states, and in many different manners of transformation and belonging, into the beautiful courts of His Kingdom, though we be so often unaware.