you'll think of me. keith urban

video [click to watch]

i woke up early this morning around 4am
with the moon shining bright as headlights on the interstate
i pulled the covers over my head and tried to catch some sleep
but thoughts of us kept keeping me awake
ever since you found yourself in someone else's arms
i've been tryin' my best to get along
but that's OK; there's nothing left to say*

*take your records, take your freedom
*take your memories i don't need'em
*take your space and take your reasons
*but you'll think of me
*and take your cat and leave my sweater
*'cause we have nothing left to weather
*in fact i'll feel a whole lot better
*but you'll think of me, you'll think of me

i went out driving trying to clear my head
i tried to sweep out all the ruins that my emotions left
i guess i'm feeling just a little tired of this
and all the baggage that seems to still exist
it seems the only blessing i have left to my name
is not knowing what we could have been
what we should have been*

someday i'm gonna run across your mind
don't worry, i'll be fine
i'm gonna be alright
while you're sleeping with your pride
wishing i could hold you tight
i'll be over you and on with my life*

and you're gonna think of me
oh someday baby, someday

thoughts of india

i don't want to be an architect that just fills the earth with buildings. i want to know that what i am doing is increasing the quality of life. call me idealistic or naive. say i don't really know the real world or that my perspective will soon change. i don't think this desire is going away. i've been thinking a lot about india. there is a group called eMi [engineering ministries international] and their goal is to help the poorest of the poor in the world through the built environment. they have built over 500 projects in 75 developing countries. from clean water projects to orphanages to disaster relief, their projects provide direct aid to impoverished peoples around the globe while showing them God’s love in a practical way. most of the work they do is by professionals, architects and engineers, who use their two weeks of vacation to travel to one of the countries. as a team and with a full-time staff member, they spend their time in intense design and collaboration. when their short trip is over, the project is then handed over to the staff in the closes eMi office (they have 6 international offices) and the interns in the office. right now i want to be an intern in india.

so i was checking out the website and realized that i could still do a spring internship if i turned in my application by 15 september. "wow," i thought. "is this what's next for me? could i be leaving for india in january?" it's always easier for me to start over then to rebuild. sometimes i would rather go to a foreign place where nobody knows me than to drudge through baggage where i am known. but at the same time, i don't want to just run. i asked God if i am to stay, to give me something to be a part of here in wichita, something that i could invest myself in. the next day, i received three separate phone calls from three different people, all asking me to be a part of three separate ministries they thought i could be used. so i'm thinking there's a reason i need to be in wichita. india will have to wait.

no more first days

remember those rites of passage i talked about before, this month marks another one. this is the first august in 19 years i have not returned to the classroom. i have always looked forward to the beginning of school...most of us did. even those students who hated the second day still had a unique affinity with the first day of a new year. i usually got a new outfit, that was my favorite part of the whole day. usually, there was also the purchase of a new bookbag, which i would carefully select, knowing it alone possed the power to placement in social groups. or course, there was always paper, college ruled of course, folders, and pencils. i never really got into the mechanical pencils, just good old-fashion no. 2 and i was good to go. the day always began with a first day of school note from my dad; i still have every one he wrote. he doesn't write us notes often, but we could always count on one sitting on the counter and it always made me cry. the first day of class was fun as you found out who else was in your class, where you desk or locker would be and who you would have in your lunch. everyone had to share part of their summer activities; mine usually consisted of visiting my grandma in iowa or camping at the lake. others would share of disney world, the ocean or cruises, but i didn't mind. i would get off the bus with anticipation, knowing the best afternoon snack was always the one after the first day [i think my mom appreciated the silence again] and it was the only day of the year i really wanted to tell her what happened that day when she asked me. the next day my answer would become "oh, nothing."

this year, however, it was business as usual. i drove to work and saw freshly washed faces sitting on the corner; because this was of course, the only day you had extra time to get ready. i looked at their clothes, assuming each piece had been selected with care. bookbags hadn't yet known burdens of books or daily abuse. i am no longer a part of that world, or at least not right now. someday i'll stand at the front door, take the first day of school picture, and send my little ones off. but for now, i just drive by.

we took my sister up to k-state last weekend. i felt like a parent. i drew her a map of everything i wish i would have known about my freshman year. she is going into the design profession so she stepped into her first studio already armed with years of supplies. unlike my first year of college when none of us knew what to expect, we came prepared with duct tape, extension chords, sticky tape, and all the tools we wish we would have brought six years ago when i moved in. i remember feeling her excitement; a new start. a world of endless possibilities. but also a fear of the unknown. i wondered if i would make friends and who i would eat dinner with at night. who would be in my studio class and would i like my neighbors. funny how the things i worried about my first day of college, were little different from my first day of elementary school.

megan and i spent the weekend with amy. we ate at my favorite places and went running on the linear trail. we bought her the rest of her first day supplies [because you know studio professors always want you to get more] and made the mandatory walmart run. it was good to be back, but it made me glad my time was done there. i'm glad the last first day of class is behind me. i dreaded the goodbye, though. for the last five years, i have been leaving her, this time, amy was leaving me. seriously, how do parents do this? i wanted to protect her, i wanted to make sure she made good friends. i wanted her to know it's okay to stay in your room on a friday or bomb a test. i didn't want her to leave a crit to cry or feel abandoned by a friend. i went through each one and i didn't want her to feel that pain. but isn't that what college is all about? going through those things yourself? deciding what you will believe and what you take a stand for, even if it's different from what you've grown up beliving. discovering that your significance is not found in your grades or the number of friends in your facebook. parent's have to let us fall and hope that they've taught us enough that we can pick ourselves up again. i'm sure they want to jump in to help [and a lot of times do] but the real growth in us happens when they let us flounder only to figure things out ourselves.



megan and i left her there alone. we cried a lot. the three of us have become so close and it's hard to let her go. i know she will fall, but i am confident she will stand stronger because of it. i am so proud of you, amy. i miss you a lot right now. know that i love you.

addendum to 19 aug 2005

my evening of watching the moon from my driveway was followed by this sunrise. it only seemed appropiate for the sun to out do the moon.

sorry for this nature fettish lately...it's just really got me right now.

proud wichitan

wichita, kansas. home of river festival, cowtown, and titled the "air capital of the world." we have the 18th largest zoo in the nation, moshe safdie's exploration place, and the wushock [weirdest mascot i have ever seen]. but from now wichita will also carry the title, "home of btk." there is nothing that has brought the city more national and international attention than the serial killer dennis rader. if you hadn't heard of us before, you definitely have by now. wichita didn't carry the best of name before, and this doesn't help the case.

most people in wichita have some random event or to link them to btk [bind, torture, kill]; i am no different. when i was six, my babysitter, vicky wegerle, was murdered. it is my first memory of death. i remember her being with us one day and then gone the next. i couldn't figure out when she was coming back. i overheard my mom talking to someone about her being strangled by a telephone chord and how hard she must have fought. her husband was first suspected which created quite a stirring in our little church. it wasn't until years later her homicide was connected to the already long string of btk "projects" he had created for himself.

in the same lutheran congregation, we found our wichita grandparents...well kind of. our own grandparents lived hours away and don and pete, don and pete rader that is, adopted us as their own. i cannot tell you how many afternoons were spent running around their backyard and playing lincoln logs in their living room. the first time the mug shot of the now infamous dennis radar appeared on our tv screen, the family resemblance was unmistakable. don told us later that dennis was his nephew and they had spent many a summers camping with him and his family. he was always such a family man and played with all the kids. he never would have guessed the same man was not only capable of committing such heinous crimes, but already had.

i am really quite tired of it all. i don't watch the news anymore or pick up the paper. i don't want to give him any more attention then he already has. that's all btk has wanted from the beginning; it makes me sick. last week the tv stations played the trial live for three days, sharing the gruesome details. i left the room when my family flipped to it. i have to admit, there is something in us that is curious, something that wants to know how another human being is capable of such things. but there is a much larger part of me that wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

i cannot tell you how many times i have been asked about the wizard of oz when people outside the state or even the country find out i'm from kansas. i have even had questions like, " is toto's breed more dominate there than others? have you ever been hit by a tornado? do you have lots of friends named dorthy?" are you serious? [and i really think some of them were.] i can only wait for the next round of questions that will inevitably be follow me because of the life of this wichitan serial killer. thanks.

reflections of the Son

the grass was too prickly and my front porch is covered; so tonight, i laid on my driveway. i wanted to be see the sky, to sit under it, to be enveloped by it. there was little remnant of the hot day still left in the air as i let the wind blow over my body and relaxed in its coolness. living in the city, i don't see many stars, only the really bright ones. once i spent a couple weeks on a navajo reservation 25 miles from electricity; i have never beheld such a wonder as the night sky in the barren desert. the sky was sprayed with millions of white dots, glimmering and twinkling as if playing music together. i once heard that stars are simply holes in the sky, and through these holes we see the brilliance of God; only pieces of His glory.

there are no twinkles tonight; their shinning is dimmed by the walmart parking lot a half a mile away. no tonight, it was not the stars that held me captive; tonight it was the moon. i don't remember seeing it glow so vibrantly before, so big, so bright. my view from the pavement was silhouetted by the oak in our front yard; i couldn't take it all in at once. i just had to lay there and soak slowly into me.



the moon, unlike the stars or the sun, produces no light of its own. there are no gases churning together on its surface to emit light for itself. the brightness i see from it is the reflecting light of the sun. i cannot see the sun at all; it has long since set. but i can see in the moon, the effects of it and know that somewhere, it is still giving off light. even in the darknest hours of the night, the moon still spills it's soft blue hue across the streets. the sun will come again, but until then, it lights the earth through the moon.

when you live your life in Christ, you know life will not be filled with sunny days; pain and struggle are inevitable. but you know the darkness is temporary. regardless of how difficult things may seem, your hope is in something greater, something bigger, something brighter. it feels as if darkness is all around me and there is no sign of the morning sun. until i see the light of day, Lord, reflect Yourself in me.

experimenting with audio

i am about to take blogging to a whole new level.
these songs go out to you...

dare you to move switchfoot
[click title to hear song]

welcome to the planet, welcome to existence
everyone’s here, everyone’s here
everybody’s watching you now, everybody waits for you now
what happens next, what happens next

*i dare you to move, i dare you to move
*i dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
*i dare you to move, i dare you to move
*like today never happened, today never happened before

welcome to the fallout, welcome to resistance
the tension is here, tension is here
between who you are and who you could be
between how it is and how it should be*

maybe redemption has stories to tell
maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
where can you run to escape from yourself?
where you gonna go? where you gonna go?
salvation is here*

collide howie day
[click title to hear song]

the dawn is breaking
a light shining through
you're barely waking
and i'm tangled up in you...yeah

i'm open, you're closed
where i follow, you'll go
i worry i won't see your face
light up again

*even the best fall down sometimes
*even the wrong words seem to rhyme
*out of the doubt that fills my mind
*i somehow find, you and i collide

i'm quiet you know
you make a first impression
i've found i'm scared to know i'm always on your mind*

even the best fall down sometimes
even the wrong words seem to ryhme
out of the doubt that fills your mind
you finally find, you and i collide

you finally find, you and i collide
you finally find, you and i collide

come to me jill paquette

i like this song not for the sound by the lyrics

broken and battered your confidence shattered but i am still here
the things that you cling to they seem to just bring you
right back to your fears
were the nails and the spear in My side not quite enough to provide
the victory you need in your life

come to Me, come to Me
if you come to Me, it'll be all right now

depression is ending this fairytale ending you've sought for yourself
broken glass photographs that use to make you laugh sit on the shelf
and you'd change the frame if you could,
but you're doing the things that you should
hoping that I'll think you're good enough

you're broken and shattered
your body's been battered by what they call life
depression is ending this life
you've been spending wrapped up in your lies
and once in a while is not enough to show to Me what you call love
don't waste My time words aren't all I want

broken and battered your confidence shattered but I am still here....

record life

it’s been raining all weekend and it only seems appropriate in response to the week i’ve just had. the past couple of nights i just sat on my porch and enjoyed it. i had a best friend whom i loved to share nights like this with. we loved listening to the soft hum it made upon the pavement, the smell it left in the air, and the way it stills your heart. you see it doesn’t matter what kind of mood you are in before it starts, a gentle summer rain always brings a calmness, a peace to your soul. i miss that friend and i miss sharing moments like these with him.

jillm vol. 12 is now complete. last week i finished my 12th journal. i say this not out of pride or arrogance, but satisfaction. the last 8 years of my life are cataloged in the worn books neatly stacked on the prized bookshelf above my bed. i think all of the other books in my room secretly wish to be there knowing that only the most important books are assigned that space; perhaps they feel like a child’s forgotten christmas toy from the previous year sitting on their dusty shelves. but if ever there is a fire, those are the only things i will take. every other possession in my life can be replaced; but those words, those memories, those thoughts, can never be recounted again the way they were first recorded. in my excitement to add another compellation to my set, i called my dad in to see them all splendidly standing in a row...he was proud of me, but not quite as excited.

my first journal is the smallest of them all and took over four years to finish. but it was in it that i discovered the therapy i find in writing. writing for me has become an addiction, a good addiction, but an addiction none the less. what i share on this website is only a fraction of the thoughts that fill those tattered pages. they aren’t diaries like little girls have, full of crushes and secrets; they are the record of my life. i laugh when i read their humbling beginnings in volume one going all the way back to my 16th birthday…”trent told me after school today danny thinks he likes me…” so maybe they started as a diaries.

paralleled with my evolution, my writing has also changed and developed. today i write not just to record life, but to sort through my thoughts. a lot of times i cannot follow my thoughts until i sit and write them down. there is something very therapeutic in the connection between my hand, the pen, and the paper. it’s hard for me to sit at the computer and write anything,.. it’s labored, unnatural, and uncomfortable. i don’t remember the correct grammar rules or what a participle phrase is, i just write. my journal is like an old friend, one in whom in confide in and just listens. she doesn’t feel the need to tell me what she thinks or what she would do. she just takes it all in and let’s me see the answers for myself. each time i begin a new one, i select it carefully; no lines, paper with texture, soft cover. it's the only thing that works for me. likewise, i must have a pen which writes thick, spilling ink onto the page. the more ink, the smoother my pen glides across the page. i think i've become annoyingly anal about these tools. must be the architect in me.

upon the pages are taped song lyrics and ticket stubs, receipts and notes. sketches fill the space when words are not enough. i can flip through them and find most every struggle and triumph i have encountered. i can read about travels to far off places, as well as tearful moments in my bedroom. i find encounters with people whom i have crossed paths with for brief moments and impacts from people who are still walking with me today. there are so many memories i have tried to etch into their pages that i might remember them again as vividly as i felt them when they first happened.

i think i would be embarrassed if anyone were to pick them up and read them; sometimes i write about such silly and insignificant things. but they aren't silly to me; at least not the moment i write them. i can picture my kids someday standing around flipping through the pages of my journals laughing, “mom, i just can’t imagine you in college!” i laugh because i know i feel the same way about my mom. i look back at pictures of her when she met my dad and wonder what she was like. i hope these pages tell my children what i was like.

whatever fits you, do it. if you blog, blog more. if you sketch, sketch bigger. If you sing, sing louder. whatever you have to do to record your life, do it. then do it more.

1625.6 miles later

two months ago, nikki and kevin had no idea where they would be in the next semester; a week ago they moved to la, kevin enrolled in fuller theological seminary, nikki has a job and they've hung out in malibu. sometimes when God moves, he does it fast. they picked me up on their way out of the bread basket of the world and we spent the next four days together watching the scenery change around us and enjoying each other's company on our way to their new home in los angeles.

i really never thought 35 hours in a car would go so fast. i think usually when i drive, it's to be somewhere at a certain time: in manhattan by dinner, to kc before the wedding, to wichita before dinner. when you let time control your schedule, it controls you too. this trip wasn't about schedules or agendas. we had no time frame to commit to; we just had to be in LA before my plane left monday morning. there was a sense of freedom, excitement of what is about to become, and a deadline-free kind of peace. i hadn't realized how long it had been since i felt like that...i needed it.

before i left, my mom bought time the book prayer and the art of volkswagen maintenance by don miller. i had all intentions of reading it...as we all do on car trips. but i actually didn't open it until my flight home. to my amazement, don and his friend paul take the exact same road trip i had just finished except beginning in texas and finishing further north. he drove the same highways, visited the same cities, and hiked the same trail at the grand canyon. sometimes he would describe things exactly the way i saw them, but couldn't put the feelings into writing like he did. consequently, i'm going to use some of his words; no need to reinvent the wheel.


no matter where i live or where i travel to, the plains in kansas will always feel like home. the sky never seemed so big as when i'm driving between the fields. we stopped for braums in weatherford, oklahoma, which is only mentioned because it was funny the way nikki pronouced it. we passed a wind farm as well, which i had never seen before. it kind of made me proud in a tree-hugger kind of way; it's cool when you see people using natural energy like that.


our first day final destination was found in clovis, new mexico: population 32,000 people and 70,000 cows. it's a big dairy and cheese area, but unfortunately, you can only smell the producers of both. we stayed with nikki's great uncle who spent the evening entertaining us with green chilies, stories, and his 1967 firebird [the very first year it was made] both kevin and his brother, steve, were more than excited to take it around for a spin. i admittedly was too, realizing i have never rode around in a convertible before [cross that off of list of things to do in life] and what made it even better, is riding in it while the sun was setting. i have a thing for sunsets, i don't know why. "i remember when i was a child hearing the story of noah. how desperately i wanted a rainbow of my own; a personal message from God."[70] i think mine are sunrises and sunsets; of course you all can enjoy them too. i am reminded in those transitional parts of the day, that God puts beauty around, but it is us who choose whether or not we will enjoy it. it is us who must set aside our distractions to enjoy the simple things that are truly meant to take our breath away.


so riding in a convertible at 70 mph is definitely not as glamorous as it looks on the movies. i don't think i could see half of what we were passing because my hair was in my face. towards the end of the trip, steve stood up and just yelled. he sat down with such satisfaction and excitement, "i've wanted to do that the whole time!" i love his passion. it's easy to let inhibitions or pride keep us from letting go like that. steve didn't let them miss this moment.


we took highway 60 into albuquerque. the small two-lane highway offered little traffic and a big view that didn't change with the passing miles. "it's another planet out here, you know. i've never spent any time in the desert. it's just empty. miles and miles of empty. i don't mind it that much." (81) dinner that night was in flagstaff at cracker barrel; i honestly don't think i have been to one since high school. but the food was warm and we were hungry. "i come to flagsaff with presuppositions. without having been here, i can say with confidence that half these people believe in UFOs. one in one hundred have been sucked into spinning-sphere ships and carry vague memories of little green men taking skin samples from their buttocks. they have scars to prove it and will show you if they've had enough beer, and the bar is nearly empty. the city, though, is cut from the same cloth as every other city: people living in community for need of money and companionship." [93]


"no amount of hype or brochure sales copy can prepare a person for the breathtaking depth of the canyon itself. from 20 feet away, we saw an abrupt drop in the landscape. as we near the edge, the depth is all consuming. there seems to be no bottom. no words are spoken here, and the sound of children fade to the background as a breeze whistles through sagebrush and a fiery red cliff drops under our feet. it is a top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling as i imagine myself plunging headlong over the rail. enough emotion to take a step back and catch my breath. regaining my senses, i lean over the edge and focus my eyes to find the bottom. perhaps the colorado river that we know is there will come into view. but it doesn't. what i see several miles down is a flat surface, a peninsula edged by another drop. a canyon inside of a canyon." [102] this picture doesn't even begin to capture what i felt the moment i took it; no picture ever could.


we began our hike down bright angel trail rather ambitiously. nikki and kevin even dared to venture into some off road travel, only to be scolded by the park ranger. poor steve had suffered a blow to the knee a few weeks previously and was slightly ready to reach the top. we stocked up on subway and wheat thins on our way into the canyon and enjoyed the substance and the view at the top. the short nap was our reward.


i haven't spent much time with nikki and kevin together since they've been married. i love observing the way they interact, seeing the way they've learned to talk each other, and watching them love each other. i never feel like a third wheel with them; i like being with couples like that. we posed for this picture before we ascended our last switchback. i cannot even tell you how incredible this last picture is. the ground in the background is miles below me. the green dots you see are full sized trees the rock i'm sitting on just chilling over it all. the only thing i could say was, wow. "hiking through all this beauty helps me realize that life is like a canyon. we begin at the bottom of something and we spend our lives coming to the top of it. when we begin we don't know anything and we learn and we learn, and well, okay, life isn't really like a canyon at all. life isn't really like much of anything except life itself. life is too complicated to use analogies to describe it. i am but one person and there are billions of other people and each of us have a different understanding of what life is and is about. i am not one of the Christians who believes he has a corner on truth. i believe that Christ has a corner on truth. i actually have the audacity to believe the He was truth. but i am often weak in understanding the truth." [156]


nikki and i are traveling buddies. there are very few trips i have taken in the past five years that have been without her. we spent 6 months in europe gallivanting around, climbing the hills of cinque terre, galloping on horses through the egyptian desert, celebrating mid-summer in sweeden, and riding bikes along the rhine river. it only seemed appropriate to take a picture dividing the grand canyon together as we had taken parting the red sea...i know, i know, tourist moment. the weather in the desert is funny. there is no humidity there and the temperature literally drops 15 degrees from sunlight to shadow. it can be above 100 degrees during the day and drop to the 60s at night. i know few gentlemen like the knox boys who kindly gave us their shirts as the night set in.


"the canyon wall carries the sun's shadow like a sundial...but it is slow, slow, slow; moving with all the speed of syrup." [151]


"had these [canyons] eyes, they would wake to find [four] strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as the breathing red pours its tinge upon earth's shore. these mountains, which have seen untold suns set, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man's weak praise should be given God's full attention.

"it's a great wonder that those exposed to such beauty forfeit their obedience in the face of this miraculous evidence. had these mountains the gift of logic, they might very well contemplate both the majesty of God and the ignorance of man in one bewildering context." [289]


much to the boy's excitement [scarcastic emphasis added to this statement] we stopped at the hoover dam to behold this concrete wonder, and also allowing me to mark another visited state off of my list. it crosses two states and two timezones as it sits in the colorado river. the four towerss you see are the filters that draw water out of lake mead into the 16 generators at the bottom.


the wall drops 725 feet and at its base, is 660 ft wide. it holds enough concrete to build a highway from san francisco to new york city or a sidewalk 3ft. wide all the way around the world. that's a lot of dam concrete [we made many similar comments during our visit]. a quarter of the electricity generated by the dam is taken to arizona, another quarter to las vegas, and the remaining half followed us all the way into la. that's a lot of dam electricity.


the final leg of the drive was our most scenic though the most difficult as anticipation of our arrival mounted. the mojave natural preserve was incredible. we weaved in and out of it's peaks for an hour before we entered its desert. we also enjoyed typical sunday traffic from las vegas to la and found ourselves crawling across part of the highway at a less than enjoyable pace.


out of the window the blur of green and hills of homes open and close with the passing of each highway we cross under. "my mind focuses on life beyond the trees and the hills and this road cutting through them. it is there i imagine a small home surrounded by forest and a man sitting by a fire, reading the pages of a book he has read before and will read again. he is tired and nodding and though his eyes still brush the words, he has long stopped reading. the fading light through the windows and the warmth of the fire soothe him into a sleep from which he will not wake till morning, finding himself still dressed with a book across his lap. miles from the house, in another home, still in the here and now [albeit in my imagination] i see a family at evening supper, perhaps saying grace. and at that table there is a woman who is glad to have her husband as he has been to such-and-such a place to do business. and that same man is thinking he prefers no other company that this with which he is blessed tonight. ever nearer, and perhaps in a home just off this interstate, down a dusty drive weaving through maple and pine that spread over these rolling hills, there is a young girl at her desk, constructing a letter to the boy who has earned her heart. and just outside my window, 100,000 voices fire through the phone lines that parallel this road, each voice carried swiftly to a listener who trusts his response to bradshouldered poles and sweeping lines marking the miles from home to home and business to business."

"it is something sensational to consider that there is, far and close, vague and defined, separated but intertwined, a God who watches all and is not confused, but sets the sun to his course, frames the trees with symmetry and, with like precision, judges each man's heart as quickly as it beats...it does not escape me that i am blessed to be included in this tale of a billion human conflicts and a singular resolution." [43]

welcome to la

my friend

i said goodbye to another friend today. she has moved on to the next chapter in this story we call life. she has left the place where our friendship was established and where it flourished to pursue God's adventure. i'm jealous of the life she will soon begin because she will move on without me. it's hard to let her go. it's hard to swallow the thought that i will not be on her daily list of people she sees or that our activities will no longer cross paths in the hall. i, once tightly bound with the people she surrounded herself with, will not know her new friends. i will not know her new favorite place to get ice cream or where she likes to do her laundry.



nikki is not a friend that i will lose despite the miles that now separate us. most friendships fail when distance steps in. the relationships that mean the most to me today have all been strenthened during periods of distance. i expect the same to happen with nikki. the connection we have is unique only to us. we share something different, an understanding that most of the time, goes unspoken between us. although we can be extremely vulnerable with each other, we rarely express emotion or the value of the other verbally. we're funny like that.

for the past five years, the paths of our lives have run parallel. today, hers took her away from me. it's hard for me to let her go because i don't know when our paths will cross again. will we spend another chapter of life together or will our moments always be brief? although i know our journey's will end in the same place someday, everything from now until then seems ambiguous; out of my control. i don't like that feeling.

i think nikki is one of my favorite people to pray with. she always prays with such humble confidence. when she prays for me, she always says "my friend." the way she says it, makes me seem extremely important to her, like i hold a deep place in her heart. if she were to call me by name when we pray together, i think some of the sacredness would be lost. i don't know why, but it means a lot to me for her to call me her friend. you know when you were younger and people would ask you to be their "friend." you felt a sense of belonging, of value, of significance to someone. i think i still long to be told that i matter to someone. nikki makes me feel like i matter to her.

Lord, i pray for my friend tonight. she has left everything that is comfortable and familiar for a strange city filled of unknown. Lord, be her rock and strength. show her that you are faithful. may she find joy in her dependency in You. may she step firmly with confidence which can only be found in You. be near to her.