This is me with my dear friend Jacob on the day he married his beloved on February 17th, 2024. As you can tell from the photo, I’m absolutely ecstatic. One of my closest friends’ joy has become my joy and I was completely delighted to have been able to stand beside him as his best man, witnessing this beautiful Sacrament of the Church take place between him and his wife.
When I first met Jacob in 2017, if you had asked me for an honest assessment, I probably would have told you that I thought he was an arrogant jerk, with whom I wanted nothing to do. I found Jacob to be obnoxious and opinionated, with an argument to be had in every conversation. If you had told me that a mere 7 years later, I’d be his best man, I’d have been shocked. This was a guy who, on essentially every level, I did not click with. Little did I know he felt more or less the same way about me.
I met Jacob in his first year serving as a missionary with the youth ministry my family was involved in. When the missionaries were in town, I’d see him and try to give him a wide berth, preferring to spend my time with people who were easier to get along with. All of that changed in the summer of 2018.
In that year, I’d enlisted to serve as a missionary myself and Jacob had been accepted to the organization’s staff. Thinking I could continue through my year just avoiding him, I was ready to meet new friends who shared my likes, dislikes, and opinions. That was when I met Jacob’s sister - his very beautiful, friendly, awesome-to-hang-around-with sister, Maria. It didn’t take me very long to realize that I had a huge crush on the sister of a man who I’d decided I wanted to avoid.
Realizing that there wasn’t really anything I could do to change my circumstances if I wanted to get closer to Maria, I decided it was time to have a conversation with Jacob. We chatted and I shared with him, as openly and as honestly as I could, that I was attracted to his sister and that I wanted to respect him however things moved forward. I’d find out later that this was a major turning point for him in his view of me.
As Maria and I got to know each other more, I started to learn what it was like to love him from her perspective. Maria and Jacob had had their moments of struggle too (like all siblings do) but I saw in the way she interacted with him things I had never cared to pay attention to. Through Maria, I realized that Jacob was hilarious, that he had an unbelievable integrity and commitment to his principles, that he was totally honest with himself and with those around him, and that he was ridiculously intentional.
Things with Maria started going better and better and eventually we were married. By that time, I’d grown in my appreciation for Jacob and while I wouldn’t have said we were the best of friends, we could certainly hang out together and have a good time. In 2022, Maria and I moved to Halifax, where Jacob was living, and I found myself in nearly daily proximity to him.
Something shifted in those years. Realizing that Jacob and I would be in each others’ lives forever, I decided to commit to loving him well, intentionally investing in him and resolving conflict as it came up instead of avoiding him. He did the same with me. Over many hours drinking beer, playing video games, and chatting aimlessly, I realized something -- I had made a truly wonderful friend. I was absolutely overjoyed when he asked me to stand beside him on his wedding day.
Through this season, the Lord was revealing that many of my frustrations with Jacob in my early years of knowing him came from real strengths he had. What I sometimes perceived as arrogance was actually commitment to his values, or as bluntness, an unwavering holding to the truth. Instead of withdrawing from someone I thought I didn’t get along with, the Holy Spirit gave me the courage to have frank conversations with Jacob when there was conflict, moments that almost always gave way to growth and deepened discipleship for us both.
My friendship with Jacob revealed something powerful to me: that despite what we might be tempted to believe, “clicking” with a person up front isn’t always what leads to deep and fulfilling relationships. It can be so easy to believe that we don’t have community because we can’t find anyone in our parishes or in the ministries that we’re involved in that we get along with, who we find easy to be around.
The profound mystery of friendship is that such obstacles are not insurmountable. What matters more for deep and fulfilling relationships is the willingness to stay committed to people over time, especially when we lean in closer when conflicts arise. Our repeated investment in others can sometimes bring out even more fruit than a friendship with someone we “naturally get along with.” With the help of the Holy Spirit, I was able to decide that it would be better to let the iron of Jacob’s personality sharpen the iron of my own so that we might both be more conformed to the image of Jesus.
