Life with Friends

Beth's comment on "The one about everything" post got me thinking. Have I really only known her two years? I laughed when I read the bit about nearly being "blood relatives". I think there is something about doing life together, that intensely, that bonds people. I think about knowing Beth for two years - and then I think - hasn't it been longer? It FEELS longer - what was it like to do life without Beth? Hm.

Odd, isn't it? How people come into our lives and there's a connection there - and eventually - two years, or four years, or two months - eventually, we come to this place of not remembering what life was like before we knew that person.

What a gift to be in that place. It's an amazing friendship to try to think back and wonder how weird that there was a time and place in my life when I did not know you - for you have given so much to my life, and spoken so deeply into it.

That is what I hope for this next group of participants joining us in September. I hope they make deep, lasting connections, so that in 2008, they can send someone an email, or post a comment on a blog entry and say, "Isn't it weird that I hardly knew you before...and now we're practically blood relatives??".

Here are two of my "nearly blood relatives" from my NC year; Beth and Melanie. It was taken at Wrigley Field (Cubs v. Sox), the day before I flew back home. Cubs won, by the way...