To Colorado!
Back in 2014, a friend from Cassie’s childhood, a fellow preacher’s kid and college roommate, Ashton, got married to my friend, CJ. We couldn’t make it to their wedding in June, but we did manage to make a trip to Colorado and see them a couple months later in August. We had so much fun hiking, visiting their families, seeing their church, going to a drive-in movie theater, hanging out on a ranch and just spending time with old friends. We promised we would go back again.
Wild West for Wild Friends
This year I had an opportunity to keep my half of the promise, and so I took it! It’s kinda bizarre when I think about my choice to make that trip. Our lives are so unbelievably different! After the two of them left Florida for Colorado, Cassie went to work at a church in downtown Kissimmee, dragging me along. After they left I went to UCF to start on a career in medicine. Meanwhile, CJ became a full-time cowboy and Ashton has basically become a pioneer woman, living in the middle of nowhere (seriously, the middle of nowhere) with him while raising a baby. Now they’ve got another baby due as they hide out on a ranch without internet access or phone reception, while I’m spending my time with as many people as possible and writing about it on a blog!
Despite being 1500+ miles away, exactly one mile higher from sea level than me and living radically different lives, we’re still friends. We could talk and talk and talk. We can agree about most every problem around us and can still joke when we don’t. Sure, I don’t need to look to the other side of the country to find and express empathy, to share joy, or to relate on everything from thoughts to emotions to experiences. But it is amazing that after flying away from home for 4 hours at 500 mph, I can still find people to do those things with.
Of Unions and Reunions
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity![Some weird analogies…]
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.Psalm 133
We don’t thing of unity or “unions” much outside the context of marriage. While married to Cassie, I had a constant friend. I could come home to someone who loved me and whom I could love. I could wrap my arms around her and know the smile on her face was genuine. I could sit down to tell her the roughest parts of my day and she would sympathize (most of the time). Day-in and day-out, I had someone to laugh with, joke with, hope with, dream with, and confide in. It was constant, and I felt united to her.
I thought I had lost that sense of unity when I lost Cassie. But just because I was no longer living with my closest friend, it didn’t mean I stopped living together with any friends. Even more than 6 months out, I still share dinner with our friends at least 3 times per week. I still can complain to someone with a sympathetic ear (sorry guys, you know who you are). I can still share laughter every day. And because of my faith, I can travel two time zones away and still find a home or a church full of people who love me, who share the same hope as me and who I can confide in.
Reunions with old friends are some of the happiest times. But until you plan a re-union, you don’t realize you even had a “union” with them to begin with. When it does hit you, it’s an assuring and comforting feeling. How good and pleasant it is!
P.S.
While visiting Ashton and CJ, I went with them to their family’s church in Greeley, CO. I was blessed to hear a sermon by the guy who was Cassie’s youth pastor growing up, and whom I had heard so many wonderful things about. His sermon that day was oddly relevant to this post I had planned writing, and extremely relevant to this blog as a whole. Here is the link to it, for those curious as to how.
