On the 24th of February, one of my dearest friends is flying across the world to marry the man she loves. This story would be happier if, a) I was coming along and, b) if they weren’t choosing to live in Australia without me. But such is life I guess.
God moves us around and takes us where we can flourish and we can grow and become the people He created us to be. Most of me is content with that answer. The other part is a little devastated that instead of a two-hour drive to see her, I will need an 18-hour flight. It’s quite distressing.
I shouldn’t be surprised though she’s the same girl that has been traveling the world with YWAM for the last two years. So in all actuality, I should be a tiny more chill about this, but what can I say, she’s one of my people.
While our relationship has always looked different from other BFF friendships, there’s a few things I’ve learned about this long distance relationship.
It’s a real possibility that you and your best friend could go a month without communicating…at all. I mean texting, skyping, or sending pins over Pinterest - the whole shabang, gone. The silence is real. But life happens and things are moving fast. Minutes turn to hours and hours to days and soon it’s been a while and you look around and realize that you miss them like crazy.
When you finally do pick up the phone, the time that passed doesn’t mean a thing. We have been friends for eight solid years. We’ve been through middle school awkwardness, first crushes and tragedy, and we weren’t even in the same city. The reasons we stuck so long together through the good times and the bad times are the same reasons we remain friends today. It’s how she makes me laugh and her knowing I will always have her back.
Don’t get me wrong, we still can drive each other up a wall (ie. the spider incident of ‘15). But when she finally visits, I already have her favorite ice cream in my freezer and we settle in to make fun of tween shows we shamefully watch. There’s a sense of peace for the future and we forget for awhile that it won’t always be like this. Instead it’s like she never left.
Sure I’m gonna miss her, but there’s something life changing for her over there. Something specially planned by God. Something I wouldn’t dream of getting in the way of. So I tell myself, “don’t worry, go live your life and she’ll live hers and then you’ll reunite and everything will be just as it should be”.
