A Friendship Story

This is the story of Brooke and Kelli (that's me.) I'm going to visit Brooke this week in North Carolina and I COULDN'T be more excited! We are, after all, the very best of pals. What's funny, though, is that we shouldn't be... What I mean is, we went NINE years without seeing or talking to each other, and then, last February, there she was again. And truly, it's like she was made to be my friend. This girl GETS me.

So. We met in high school when I was a sophomore, I think. She was a freshman, and went to the school across town (and she was fresh out of home school.) I was in Pickwicks, a youth acting troupe associated with the Midland Community Theater, and I guess she auditioned and got in sometime that year. I don't really remember the particulars, just that she was all of a sudden there, and we were friends.

She is the oldest of six children, and I LOVED going to the Shannon household. It was very noisy and there was always someone home getting into something. I am VERY excited about my trip to NC, because we're going to go visit her family's home in Charleston, SC over the weekend, and I will see her siblings for the first time since 2000. (I still remember them as babies, even though I've seen pictures to prove they're all grown up.)

I think I was a bad influence on Brooke when we were growing up because she was a very good little Catholic girl, and I may have uttered the occasional bad word or two. And I forgot to mention a movie I suggested that the Shannon family rent had animated demons that might give the younger kiddos nightmares. And once, I accidentally kicked her youngest brother, John Mark, in the head after playing "airplane" with him. Whoops.

So, after Brooke moved away to Mississippi, and I went to college, we just lost touch. I thought about her at key moments in life, and even sent her a wedding invitation at the last address I had for her, but it came back "return to sender".

One day, when I was new to Facebook, I had just "friended" another old pal on Facebook, and I was looking at her list of friends. There was Brooke. She was wearing a wedding dress in her profile picture so I knew instantly that she was married. And my stomach just dropped to the floor. I can't explain the feeling at all, even to this day. But it was something similar to knowing your sister got married, and didn't tell you or invite you to the wedding. I was devastated that I wasn't there to see it!

So I sent her a friend request, along with the longest message ever. A week later, we chatted on the phone for about 2 hours and got caught up on where life has taken us. (We were both SHOCKED at the similarities our lives now held.) And then a month later, I spent a long weekend with her in NC! I think neither of us knew what we had lost until we found it again. I remember chatting with my mom right before I was headed to NC last year- she was excited for me, but kind of surprised I was so pumped about visiting a friend who I knew for such a short time, almost a decade ago.

I can't explain it- she just gets me! So I'm VERY excited to see her again this week!!! Sometimes friendships are odd, and hard to explain, and sometimes you have to travel hundreds of miles to see each other, but you know that God brought you together for a reason, and all you can do is be grateful.