THE CHAT I WISH I HAD SOONER

There are people I love very much who I have not spoken to in an embarrassingly long time. No, we didn’t fight, and nothing big happened. I just thought about them yesterday and the day before that. And probably the day before that too.

To know me is to know I am not a big fan of phone calls. I would much rather send you a message, and over the years, I have developed a very comfortable system of keeping in touch with about five of my friends every two days. It worked for us, or at least it did, until I recently resumed working from a physical office.

Now, I come home at 7 or 8 pm most days, and the only things I have the energy for are making dinner, catching up with my husband, and scrolling TikTok because apparently 24 hours is no longer enough time to spend with myself. Somewhere between work, dinner, marriage, sleep, and watching strangers on TikTok live their lives, I have become very good at postponing the people I love.

Someone’s face will flash across my mind while I’m at work and I’ll think, “I should check on her.” Then I get busy. Later becomes tomorrow, tomorrow becomes next week, and eventually, the message starts to feel like something I need to prepare for. I tell myself I need the right amount of time and the right mood to actually have a conversation, and before you know it, saying hi turns into another task I need to tick off.

Interestingly, whenever I finally do it, I wonder why I waited so long. I pick up my phone, call or send the message, 20 years later, of course, and almost immediately, life feels lighter. We talk, we laugh, we catch up. Sometimes we don’t even talk about anything particularly important, and yet by the time the conversation ends, I am reminded of why I love this person in the first place.

And the best part is that they never make me feel guilty for disappearing. There is no “Wow, so you remember me now?” no keeping score; we just continue from wherever we left off, as most adult friendships should, because we are all trying to play catch-up with life, and we should give each other grace at all times.

When I picked up my laptop to write this piece to you, I sincerely thought it would be about keeping in touch with your circle and the importance of making time regardless. I thought I was going to tell you that sometimes you just have to send the message, make the call, check in, even when life is busy. However, I am realizing now that this isn’t really about that.

It’s about our relationship with God. We get super caught up with life and tell ourselves we’ll speak to him when things settle down, when our minds are less noisy, and somewhere in all of that, we forget that He is on the other line, waiting for us to have a conversation with Him and pick up.

I always imagine it as Him waiting in a coffee shop. He probably ordered black coffee, because my guy be working non-stop, and handling Nigerians alone is a handful. So I imagine Him sitting there, waiting for me, hoping that somewhere in the middle of my very busy day, I remember to say hello and check in.

And the beautiful thing is, He would never judge me either. He wouldn’t ask where I’ve been or why I took so long. He wouldn’t make me explain why I disappeared. He would simply be there, ready to continue the conversation.

Maybe that is what I am learning from all these messages I keep postponing. That sometimes, the people we love don’t need a perfect version of us. They just need us to remember them, to reach out and say hello.

So, in all of this, it’s just a reminder not to take for granted the art of staying in touch. Not with your friends, not with the people you love, and certainly not with God. Even if it’s just for five seconds.

If their name flashes across your mind, maybe that’s enough reason to say hello.