Just Call Me Peter

Just Call Me Peter
Matthew 26

We arrived in Georgia in the suffocating summer of 1980, begrudgingly accepting our new normal. Mere months prior, my dad had taken up employment with my uncle and uprooted our family from all we knew and loved in North Carolina. For a young, pre-teen girl entering 7th grade, I was less than excited or supportive about this ridiculous relocation of our family.

School started soon after we arrived, and I quickly found my place and my people in the junior high school band. Coming from a musical family, I had started playing the clarinet in 4th grade and was at least at ease in this environment. On my very first day of band class, I met a young girl. She was my friend. Oh, how I needed a friend in this strange new world I was trying to navigate. Every day…every, single day she met me in that old stinky band-room with a smile and warm greeting. Over the course of the year, we did all the typical pre-teen girlie things from sleep-overs, shopping, tanning by the pool, manicures, 4-wheeler rides, and I was certain we were quite inseparable for life. Thankful as I was for her, as it goes, I continued to make new friends and spent less and less time with my “other” friend. She was as steadfast as the first day I met her. While she wasn’t the flashy, princess popular type, and didn’t hang with “the in-crowd,” she was true. She was true to herself, and she was true to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. How often I turned my back on her when more exciting opportunities and people crossed my path, I can’t count. Yet, through the junior high and high school years, she continued to stand in the background, propping me up. 

As Holy Week unfolds, I continue to find myself along the path Jesus walked. How often am I the cheerleader on the side of the road welcoming Jesus into my day, into my life only to put him aside and deny him in my choices? What decisions and failures have me as one of the faces in the crowd yelling, “Crucify him!” then running to the cross on Sunday morning looking for my Savior? As Jesus sat at the table with the disciples for their last meal together, he looked directly at Peter and acknowledged the upcoming denials, and loved him anyway. While Peter couldn’t imagine turning his back on the Lord, he did again and again. In the time that followed the denials, Peter, utterly sorrowful, wept bitterly at his betrayal. From that time until the end of his own life, Peter was a devoted follower and came to be “the Rock of the Church.” 

Thankfully, my denials of my childhood friend have been forgiven, and she remains today, my best friend, for life. Even when I turned away from her and all the love and acceptance she offered me, she never wavered and continues to walk with me even now. We’ve meandered through adult life, sharing joys and sorrows, mostly by telephone conversations. Like my relationship with the Lord, when I reach out to her, she will answer, and I’m so very thankful for the forever friendship and forgiveness. Just call me Peter. 

Tammy Wendling