Jeff Chu: “It Is Not Well with My Soul, But I'm Trying (Part 2)”

This piece by Jeff Chu — remembering his friend Rachel Held Evans — brought me to tears. Grief is never easy, but I’m glad he shared these words with the world:

The love of true friendship creates space—space to be, space to grow, space to imagine new possibilities. But it requires attention and care. It must be tended and nurtured. And when it is, who can even measure its generative power? Such love is never passive. At its best, love behaves less like a noun than as the most active of verbs—breathing life, stirring generosity, inspiring even more love. Rachel loved so well.

This, too:

It is not well with my soul that Rachel is not here. It is not well with my soul that I never got to cook her the dinner that we had planned; she was supposed to visit Tristan and me about 10 days before she died. It is not well with my soul that Dan and the kids don’t have her with them. It is not well with my soul that we miss her every single day.