This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend a day with one of my best college friends, who happened to be in Kansas City for work (she’s a rock star with the Revolve Tour). After greeting each other with a familiar bear hug, she immediately got to work introducing me to absolutely everyone she works with—both in the office and on the road.
Later I shared my favorite KC BBQ joint with her. We talked of family and friends, past and present, work and home. She finally met my fabulous fiancé, grilling him with tough questions as only Chrissy can. (In case you’re wondering, she approved of him, which is a positive since the wedding is in 3 months.) We laughed, we cried—we were more vulnerable with each other than I, quiet honestly, ever remember us being.
In short, the day was perfectly perfect.
But something she said that day has been on my mind this week: she and I, and all my best college girl friends, have known each other longer out of college than we did in college. We’ve now lived all over the country longer than we lived across the room.
When, on all-too-rare occasions we are able to sit down across the table from each other, I feel completely at ease. But it’s everyday friendship that’s become difficult to maintain. The phone calls have become infrequent moments to “catch up” on how we’re spending our days.
As people do, we’ve all changed since we gathered, in cap and gown, for graduation photos in May of 2006—and I’m not sure there are enough hours in the day to verbalize to long-distance friends the changes that I have experienced in my life, my opinions, my convictions, beliefs, and faith since the last time we talked. I simply can’t communicate to them all the ways I’ve changed and am changing; and I wonder if they feel the same way.
Do any of you feel this way from time to time? How well do you think we can really know those who share our past more than our present, who live far from us geographically (and sometimes ideologically)? And finally, as a Christian, should my approach to long-distance friendship look different from my non-Christian counterparts?
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