I’d like to begin this letter with saying today isn’t my wifi day in our rotation & thank you to Brit Smith for making this possible.
Amanda –
I’m having trouble beginning this letter – mostly because I don’t know how to do this knowing I won’t be spending your birthday with you for the first time in nine years. (So also happy almost ten years of friendship!!!!) Thanks for being my duet partner, my road trip partner, my sticky situation partner, my eating atrocious amounts of food partner, but most importantly my concert partner.
Let’s get the serious stuff out of the way first.
Although for 90% of things we are on the same brain wave, that last 10% is what I think makes this friendship so great. I think the biggest difference in us is your love to give gifts. You have a really intentional, creative, no boundaries mentality of gift giving that I am so often on the receiving end of. I think I respect it so much because I’m kind of terrible at it, but you give me bucket loads of grace in it anyway.
The difference in this friendship and all the others I’ve ever had is that this one introduced me to the Gospel. You have no compartmentalizations with your friends, which is also something I’ve adopted from you. Your work friends know your school friends who know your ARC friends who know your college friends who know your high school friends who all know Gabi. When we became friends, I got to be friends with everyone in your life. You brought me to good ole 924 in 7th grade and I was never the same. (For those of you that aren’t Amanda reading this 924 is the name of the youth group at our church based off Luke 9:24.) You introduced me to a world where people actually cared about each other and hung out with each other outside of church and knew things about each other and prayed with each other. Honestly, I don’t know where I would be had you not drastically impacted my path then. I wouldn’t be on the world race for sure. I don’t know that I would have an accurate picture of who Jesus is, or who I really am. I definitely wouldn’t have given my life back to Jesus freshman year of high school, or surrendered all my own plans for the future. You pulled me into your life so effortlessly and it changed the trajectory of mine.
Now for the more Alexis / Amanda portion of this thing.
Over the past nine, almost ten years, we’ve developed my favorite collection of stories ever. We’ve broken, lost, or completely demolished insane amounts of technology – cameras, phones, cars, and car keys are just a few. We’ve watched a very unhealthy about of television shows, many of which were full season all nighters. We’ve somehow managed to have a pretty equal amount of successful and disastrous road trips. Even though we have an abnormally low rate of music festivals that don’t get rained out in our back pocket, we always seem to make the best of it. I know you’ll forever beat me at laser tag and I still wonder where you got that super power. I’m happy to know we have mutually agreed that arctic camping isn’t for us, and that I really do need to take my lactose intolerant medicine when eating TCBY ice cream. Honestly I can’t wait to eat sandy pub subs at the beach and maybe make a tunnel again? Hahahahahhahaha just kidding never again. Anyway, I hope you don’t get lost going to Whataburger today and that your sweet tea doesn’t negatively effect you too much. Hoping you get lots of gifts, minimal amounts of verbal affirmation and physical touch, and really great unexpected adventures.
See ya in a few weeks, bro. I’ll bring the smoothies.
