This school year has been very blessing to me so far.  New things have come racing to fill my time and the old things seem like they pop up once in a while.  And joyfully all of those things are present in my prayer life.  Softball, special praise, convictions from Mexico, mini-o’s, reading a certain someone’s quiet times, my church back home.  This is miles from where I was last year; where my focus was last year.

But there are a couple things I really miss.  And lots of them are from FarPar 14.  And lots of them are just from my former roommate.

I miss hanging out with the FP14 guys.  Today I hung out with Byron and John after softball.  We spent a good deal of time just reminiscing but we also got to have some more fun.  Like we were talking about our softball teams and how they were doing and how we each almost got clobbered (except for Byron, the beast, who did get clobbered).  And how Zas completely messed up John and Byron’s orders.  But mine was awesome.  Zas must be racist (kidding!).

I miss my roommate from the past three years.  Last night I got to go on a little adventure that caused me to miss systematics.  And it wouldn’t have happened without Mike, my former roomate, and Jooree and Eunseouk.  I get back from mini-o’s practice and I find out that Jooree called me and we’re all eating together.  So I go down to Mike and Eunseouk’s room and we just sit in there and talk.  Then Eunseouk goes to get his car.  At the ACES library… … we get a call from him ten minutes later saying it won’t start, so we pile in my car, pick him up and go to Dorcas.  I refuse to call it by its new name.  Kind of like chubbies in Boy Meets World.  After some delicious food, we drop Jooree off and try Eunseouk’s car again.  Still dead.  We try and jump it.  20 minutes and it’s still dead and I’m almost out of gas.  So we figure that it’s only half a mile to the FAR parking lot, let’s just push.  So there we were, crossing Florida avenue at eight o’clock at night pushing this car into the parking lot.  That’s a calf workout to be sure.

I miss my old small group leader Amy.  I got to meet with her a couple of days ago.  I love talking with her.  She’s just one of those people that just make you want to smile.  She’s got the goofy-ness of a little girl and so much wisdom to go along with it.  It’s a fun combination.  So we go and trade stories about the summer a little and she rebukes me nicely.  And I end up acting goofy for the second half of it because somehow I break a tooth in the middle of it.  I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m insane.  I’m just too proud to admit I broke a tooth while eating my salad.  It still hurts!

And I also miss how I can’t seem to randomly talk to people anymore.  Like I used to talk with Liz from my small group all the time.  And we’d make fun of each other and just have a good time.  Sometimes we’d talk about deeper stuff if the conversation led that way.  But now it’s just awkward.  Time and sin have separated us, and now we don’t even talk.  And I’ve all but quit this electronic instant messaging (While simultaneously getting a texting plan…) because it seems like people you get to know that way, they just… I don’t know… words are real to me and they aren’t to some people.  And tone can get messed up.

It’s sad how some friendships are just born of convenience, and there they die.  Especially when one person might value it and the other doesn’t.  And it makes me sad when I say a lot of my small group friendships were like that.  As soon as small group is over… you know the rest.

Soon I’ll be leaving campus.  I love so many people here.  If I said it to your face, it would make you uncomfortable because that’s the culture we live in.  But I do.  I just want to let you know that.  I love you and I miss some of you already and I’m going to miss a lot more of you later.

<IXOYE><