When the girls asked me to write about how we met, my first thought was, “I don’t really remember!” It has been about 12 years, and I probably do have some sort of memory loss from drinking too much diet coke, but the real reason is that I can’t really remember them NOT being in my life. They are life-long, soul sister, kindred spirit friends.
We did go to college together, and were involved in the same campus ministry and Bible study. We decided to live together while working on a Halloween outreach (making ghosts out of tootsie pops-- why my mind chooses to remembers this vital detail I am not sure). It went something like one of us saying, “Hey, we should be roommates next year and live in a house, it would be so fun.” The others, “Yeah, let’s do it! We could share clothes and shoes!” And the deal was sealed. Oh, the ease of making decisions when you’re nineteen.
Our friendship just grew stronger from there. We moved into our house on M Avenue and each of us painted our room a different color of the rainbow (much to the chagrin of our landlord, I’m sure). We thought it would be just like a big slumber party every day, and a lot of days it was, but we also learned that when you live with someone you can’t keep the mask on and we saw a lot of sin in ourselves and each other. We experienced sharing bathrooms, primping for hot dates and also when a couple of us got a particularly explosive case of food poisoning. We lived more like sisters, constantly running from one side of the house to the other, “Which shoes look better with this?” “Who ate the last of my peanut butter and put back the empty jar?” “______, put on some clothes!!!”
We had some of the best memories that year in spite of some hard times. There is something to be said for people seeing you at your worst (that food poisoning fiasco) and loving you anyway. That is what makes us more like family than friends.
In the years since that year in our very own “Orchard House,” we have been through a lot. We have learned that hard times are relative, and squabbles over dishes and where to hang pictures rank pretty low on the totem pole of life.
Collectively, we have experienced: 2 of us getting married, all of us going into full-time vocational ministry, 2 of us moving to different states, infertility, an international adoption, a son, pregnancy, a daughter, parents splitting up, a parent passing away, death of other loved ones, living a year overseas, and much much more. Even though we haven’t lived together in a physical house through these things, we are bound together in the bond of Christ and have walked with each other though joy and sorrow.
We could have never imagined that day that we decided to live together how much that one decision would change our lives. God knew of course, and He was providing a depth of friendship for us that we could never manufacture on our own.
We still get together for a weekend every six months or so, and stay up until 4 am pouring our hearts out and solving the world’s problems. Each time we are together we are reminded what a gift we have in our friendship, and this is part of what prompted us to start this blog. We want to have a new adventure together and encourage others to seek out community like this, where you can be real and vulnerable and loved. We pray that this will be glorifying to God, an offering of praise to Him for one of the great gifts He has given us—each other.
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