These past few weeks I’ve been quite reminiscent about a few people…bear with me as I briefly travel through time:)

This is my best friend, Jennifer (Spules), and me at a Harvest Party (aka-the church party we went to a few days before we went trick or treating:).  I was a bum (why?) and she was a baby…btw, she wore those pj’s for years!

We met in 3rd grade at our church’s Missionettes group and immediately connected.  Jen and I were apart of a group of girls that called each other BFF’s…we had bracelets and everything! 🙂 Just about every Sunday after church we were either over at my house, Jen’s house, or our friend Eileen’s house.  Of all the girls that I used to spend hours doing my hair and putting my makeup on with, Jen’s the only one that stuck with the Forever part of BFF.  I could write for pages about this friend of mine, and although at the age of 28 I have a plethora of God’s gracious gifts of friendships, Jen will always be the friend that’s known me the longest, and the one that’s seen me through the most…sounds selfish, doesn’t it?  She’s been God’s gift of friendship to me for 20 years.

We were in 7th grade and we went to Poquessing Middle School together.  We continued onto Neshaminy High School together, where we were proud of the fact that we enjoyed wearing sweats and our hair pulled back in pony tails most days.  I remember our senior year we had this one place where our paths to our first classes crossed and we would say, "Hey, you look cute today!"…knowing full well that we looked like, well, you know.  I remember taking computer classes with her, and us always (always) getting done early and being able to talk.  Study Hall with Mr. Hoy where we’d get gently scolded for talking, but he liked us so, not scolded too much.  "This too shall pass" was what she
used to always say to me whenever I was frustrated.  We would pass notes in Geometry like there was no tomorrow.  What a confidant!  We would pray together all the time and even if we didn’t understand what was going on in each other’s lives…we would still somehow understand.  Jen and I went to the same church, too, in high school(a different one than we did at first).  We were apart of PRIZM youth ministries together and we got to do ministry together.  What a sweet time in life with my friend…even in tough moments. 🙂

We went away to college together-not meaning to go together-with a group of our friends.  What group of friends goes to school 24 hours away?  ECF (East Coast Fellowship) is what we called ourselves, and we always tried to spend our birthdays together.  Jen
and I intentionally didn’t live together when we first went away to NCU.  We said it was because we wanted to be sure to meet more people…secretly I think Jen just knew I was a little bit messier than her and didn’t wanna chance it:)  Hah!  Her first roommate was kinda messy too…but after some agreements, we ended up having our first apartment together our 5th and last year of college.   We were the last ones to make it into an apartment that year and ended up in a tiny, tiny studio apartment that wouldn’t hold beds if we wanted it to.  We bought Coleman sleeping cots on clearance at Target and slept on those:)  You had to go through our closet to get to the bathroom.  Oh, what an interesting apartment that was.  Chris Woelfle, the apartment guy at the time, vowed to never rent that apartment to more than one person ever again and had us move for the 2nd semester to a more normal place.  And so we graduated together for the second time.

That summer, my best friend married her new best friend:)  I received the privilege of being a Maid of Honor in her wedding, which meant the world to me.  Currently I carry around, in my purse, a little white Bible that I carried down the aisle that day…I get to think of Jen all the time…that little Bible means so much to me! 

So much of our relationship cannot possibly be recorded in even a series of blog posts, but I am reminiscent for one main reason…Jennifer called me a couple weeks ago to tell me that she’s having a baby!  She said that I get to be an Aunt Mim again!  Yay!  I’m still bubbling over with excitement over this announcement and I am amazed at how gracious God is to intentionally place people in our lives…sometimes for a season…and sometimes forever.

Here are the Gowell’s and me, from the last time I saw them last June….we’ve aged fairly well, right? 😉