Cook: Our early Thanksgiving dinner

photo David Cook

In the beginning, Donna Williams and I were not friends. Enemies? Maybe that's going too far, but certainly not friends.

I'd hurt her.

She'd come back at me.

We both had our hackles up. Our hearts? En garde.

It began back in August, when the city's domestic partner ordinance was voted down. I wrote one particular column. You may recall it.

"God is gay," I wrote.

She responded: How could you?

I wrote: Jesus would gladly bless a same-sex marriage.

She responded: Please apologize. If you don't, I'm canceling my subscription.

I wrote: No way, Jose. I'll apologize for lots of things, but never my opinion.

We had our dukes up. It was a fistfight without any fists. There was a gulf between us.

"A wedge," Donna would later say.

Then, Donna did something unexpected. Something extraordinary.

She broke the cycle.

She set her sights on a different goal. Not winning the argument, but something else.

"Reconciliation," she said.

One day in September, Donna took out her stationery -- a watercolor of five dogs on blue deck chairs at the beach -- and wrote me a letter and mailed it in an envelope the color of Destin sand.

It arrived in the newsroom.

In black cursive, she wrote six sentences that changed everything. Instead of condemning, they were complimentary. Instead of egging our conflict on, she encouraged common ground.

The letter was disarming and graceful and warm. It was an olive branch in the midst of our tiny battle.

"Yours truly," she wrote.

Then, I wrote back, softer than before.

We began to email.

Last week, we met at Wally's for lunch.

"I'll have the stew," she told the waitress.

"Me too," I said.

For nearly an hour, we talked family, jobs, God and headlines. We learned about each other. (She works at Henegar/CBI Counseling Center. She also is a grandmother who loves her grandkids.) Found out we share similar friends. (Hi, Henry and Jane). We read the same authors. (Donald Miller, and she even gave me a copy of his book.) Who knew?

It was an act of remembering and redefining and refocusing. She and I no longer approached one another through our differences, but through our similarities. It is a magnificent, humbling thing to experience -- the person you once saw as opposition, now as friend.

We broke bread together, in this Thanksgiving come early.

"Be ye reconciled," St. Paul wrote.

When we pull back the curtains, we find that we have far more in common than not. Lay out end to end the hopes and fears of all the people around you, and you'd see they match yours, note for note, page for page.

I forget that.

The sweetly hard work of reconciliation asks us not to.

"It is necessary in all our relationships," Donna said. "Marriage, children, the church, our community."

Yes, our reconciliation was small and inconsequential to everyone but us.

But it still mattered.

We spoke honestly, not whitewashing what the other had said or done. But we also welcomed a bridge back to common ground. The theology that once divided us was restored via the theology that unites us.

"Love," Donna said.

Yes, I still believe what I believe.

She does, too.

But that difference is not what defines us.

"I am so grateful," she said. "Thank you."

Anything for a friend.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.

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