Pretty Sure 'Big Sandy' was the clincher....

When you go through high school and college we tend to have a “group” of friends.  As life goes on and we have to start our adult lives some of those friendships taper off and you begin to meet new people through whatever avenue – jobs, family, hobbies, etc. 

And if you’re really lucky you keep those old friendships through all of the new stages of your life. 

I’m sure the first time we met it was probably through school.  We lived in the same town, grew up in the same school district.  But we really became friends through church. 

We can be complete opposites at times.  She’s super responsible – I suppose because when you’re a wife and a mom you have to be.  I’m not a wife or mom so responsibility can go by the wayside now and then.

She’s also one of the funniest people I know. 

On this, we have our strongest bond.  We both love to laugh and find things appropriate and not so appropriate so hilarious sometimes we just can’t take it.  There have been many a times where we’ve gone into fits of giggles when even the people we’re with have no idea what is going on.

She was my roommate at youth camp every summer during high school.  The stories we told late at night or the giggles that came with it or the story of “Big Sandy” that we made up when we found out an inmate from a mental hospital had escaped nearby were of legend.  We would wake up half terrified/half hoping he would be propped up on the roof outside our window because how cool of a story would that be?

We’ve been through life’s hardest times together too.  She’s the first person I called when after years of battling a brain tumor with my mom – life decided to be extra special and we found out she had breast cancer too.  I’ll never forget her words to me on that phone call:  “I’m so sorry.  I guess now we have to wear pink?”  Then we laughed.  Because we had always discussed how the “pink” cancer gets so much more attention than the others.  Life’s big joke was now on me….and she understood it perfectly.

I’ve seen her go through her hard times too.  How strong she was sitting on a waiting room floor all night while her husband was in a life-saving surgery.  How she never left his side in the months of recovery after.  How she continued to love him through it.  How they continue to make such a full life for themselves perhaps because of that night.

These experiences are why we both understand the need for dark humor – because sometimes you’re just all cried out and that’s all that is left.

I heard her son’s first cries when she called us in the hospital waiting room right after he was born.  I was witness to her and her husband giving him his first bath that night.  And, I adore that her daughter may look like her Daddy but has the precociousness of her Mother.

We know that even when life gets in the way and so busy that sometimes we forget the important things, that we can always circle back to our friendship for respite and things are exactly as we left them. 

For this, I am forever thankful.

Funny, beautiful, kind, hard-headed, has the strength of 10 thousand angels, and today she’s finally as old as I am.

I’ve decided I’d like to be her when I grow up.

Happy Birthday sweet friend – I love you!