Friendship is born at that moment when one person
says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
C.S. Lewis
*******
Today, I have been going through a lot of old pictures. Not an easy task, considering that Mama or I have always had a camera glued to our hand. But, I braved the massive piles of photo albums that are slowly falling apart and the stack of CD's that we have managed to burn ever since we got our first digital camera in 2003, and had a wonderful time traveling down memory lane.
This is something that I do quite often. I'm not really sure why. I suppose I just really enjoy remembering "how things used to be". And let me tell you, how things used to be and how they are today are very different. Not in a bad way, it's just different. Different house, different town, different church, different people, etc. For me to look back approximately 7 years is almost like looking into a completely different lifetime. I'm sure this is something that everyone can relate to.
However, in looking at all of the differences between then and now, there was one thing that stuck out to me that really hasn't changed much at all:
...the presence of this lovely face.
I think that most of us have at least one friend, one person outside of our family circle who we trust with absolutely everything. I count myself very blessed to have such a friend and to have had her for so long! At the risk of being mushy, I must say that I love Jen so very much and I am so thankful for her. I honestly don't know what I'd do without her and I don't tell her that nearly as often as I should.
Jen and I have known each other since 1998. (As my niece, Haley, would say, "The NINE-TEEN HUNDreds???? Are you KIDDING me????????) Believe it or not, we met when our parents signed us up for the homeschool basketball team when we were seven. I think they did it simply so that they could be entertained once a week by watching a bunch of six and seven years olds toddle around the court, randomly stopping to put our hands on our hips and yell, "You're doing it wrong!".
After that horrific experience (I found out very quickly that I was not to be the basketball star that my mother was...) we saw each other occasionally as we both participated in community plays and then, after my family joined the homeschool group, our friendship really began to flourish.
We're both approximately 11 years old here.
Christmas 2003
Fourteen years later, I can honestly say that Jen has taught me a lot, whether she meant to or not. For instance, she introduced and gave me an appreciation for slapstick comedy and showed me that it really is possible to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one night after swimming 6 races in a swim meet and driving for and hour and a half. Ok, so I watched it through half-closed eyes, but I stayed mostly awake!
All kidding aside, I really have learned a lot just by being around and watching her.
At the beginning of our friendship, I suppose you could say that we were the odd-balls out. We just happened to be weirder than the other weird homeschool kids (scary thought, isn't it!) and were sort of left to ourselves most of the time. While I furiously tried everything I could possibly think of to make myself fit in, Jen just sat back, watched, and happily went on with her weird ways. I'll never forget her looking at me and saying, "You know, I just don't understand why you think it matters that much."
It took about seven years for that to sink in to my thick skull, but it finally did!
Trying to avoid boredom while our younger siblings
were rehearsing their play - 2003.
2003 - Me in the infamous purple dress and Jen in
the coveted blue dress.
I suppose there comes a time for all of us, when we're growing up, for us to find out who our friends really are. That time came for me just before my thirteenth birthday. I remember it like it was yesterday, and yet I couldn't really tell you how it happened. It just did. All of a sudden, I looked around and everyone was gone.
Except Jen.
Let me tell you, God knew that He was going to have to find an incredible person who would put up with my highs and lows and in-betweens and survive it, and He found her! If anyone were to ever ask me what a true friend looks like, I would immediately point them to Ms. Jennifer Elise. It's safe to say that everything I know about being a friend to someone else, I learned from her, though I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be able to manage it as easily as she does.
We've really been through a lot together. Laughter, tears, pain. I'll never forget pushing her down the hall in her wheelchair after her foot surgery and ramming her foot into the corner. We both cried for about 15 minutes. Then of course, there was the time I fell out of the tree, the time we nearly collapsed with laughter after I stepped on my skirt and nearly lost it while on stage in front of a huge audience, the time she nearly fainted when we had to dissect a starfish (I didn't feel sorry for her because I was to busy being irritated that she got out of the icky mess and wondering why I didn't think of the fainting idea first...), the time we choreographed an entire dance routine to the Larry Boy theme song in her living room, oh yeah, and the time I practically handed her first place in the spelling bee because I forgot to say "capital A" when asked to spell "America".
2009 - We managed to talk one of Jen's brothers into
being our photographer. ;)
Over the years, we've become virtually inseparable. So what if we now live about one and half hours from each other? When you've got cell phones, email and Facebook, anything is possible!
Our conversations usually cover just about everything. And by everything, I do mean everything. It's so nice to have someone to whom you can say virtually anything that pops into your head, whether it be silly, serious, theological, spiritual, emotional or otherwise, and they won't write you off as a total psychopath. Of course, this is probably because we usually feel pretty much the same about just about everything. I'm sure there are some exceptions, but I can't think of any! I'll never forget the first time we sat down and had our first, serious, woman to woman talk. I think we were probably thirteen or fourteen and after it was over, we leaned back, looked at each other and said, "Wow, this is pretty cool!"
2009 - 17 years old and ready for graduation!
May 2009 - If you've never been to a homeschool graduation,
you've got no idea what you're missing!
Today, we're still weird and going strong! We both look a little different than we used to, our teeth are straighter, we learned how to fix our hair, wear make-up, and we both wear glasses. Hopefully, we're also a little more mature than we used to be, but otherwise, things haven't changed much. Topics of conversation have changed a bit, but 2 1/2 - 3 hour phone calls are still the norm. The inside jokes are still just as funny, and we still love embarrasing the "little ones" even though they aren't so little anymore. (It's a whole lot easier to embarrass 6 ft tall little brothers than it was to embarrass the 4 ft ones!)
Now, that we're both rapidly approaching our twenty-first birthdays, I have to sit back and wonder what my life would have been like without Jen. Honestly, I can't imagine it. She's been the best friend that this quirky homeschooled girl could have ever asked for and I wouldn't give her up for the world.
I love you, Jen! And I look forward to a lifetime of friendship, because, as the saying goes:
"We will always be friends - you know to much!"
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