My Person

There are people who come into your life that make you feel alive.

Like when they walk into the room, you feel like Jesus just came closer.

Because to be with them is to be close to the heartbeating of Abba.

It's weird. One day, they were a stranger passing by you on the sidewalk, in the cafeteria, in the elevator, accross the room. Then something happens and you begin to believe you can't live without them. Or just that you'd really rather not.

It's that "somthing happens" stage I'm fixated on this morning. What happens inbetween cordial smiles and intertwined lives? When does knowing someone begin to penetrate the root of who we are, the core of our awareness? Where is the point along the journey of friendship where you allow that person to speak into your being, into your life, into your soul; where the passing hellos of cordial aquantaince have fallen and authentic communitiy has taken it's place?

Katelynn is my person. I'm feeling this way particularly because we just cut chapel and drank tea in my room until she was late for class. This is not the main reason she's my person, but definitely one of them. We talked about relationships, school, friends, her boy, my issues, and a potential girls' night out, both knowing the last would end up being the two of us treating ourselves to chocolate with our tea the next time we cut chapel.

Katelynn makes me feel alive. She stirs my soul because she cares about it enough to ask provocative questions of it. She asks about my past, my hurts, my expectations, my victories, my failrues, and my Jesus. She prods. She expects. She provokes. These things make me feel alive.

When she eventually rushed off to class (already six minutes late with a ten minute walk ahead of her), and as the door shut behind her, I wondered at where the time whent. I wondered at how we got here, both naturally guarded individuals, to this place of profound knowing and understood belonging all the same.

I remember frist meeting her and being scared because she was "that girl" in our freshman class. She remembers meeting me on facebook and calling her mom, telling her she couldn't go to Moody because the Brio Girl was going,and she was too intimidated. The first time we talked I asked her about the boy she was sort-of-prospectively-thinking-about dating. I was up front in asking. She was upfront in telling me it was none of my buisness. We've been inseperable since.

Since laying down the titles of popularity and whatever Brio would be, we've learned to allow eachother to be fully human, even fully fallen. I know this path has been paved with various pebbles and stones, but the journey to this place is still a vauge, wafting question in my mind.

And I think I'm okay with that.

Too many late night papers and Old Testament reading assignments,

Too many late night crepe cravings,

Too many Noble Tree coffee dates,

Too many breakup tears,

Too many classic Amy and Katelynn banana in peanut butter and honey fondue,

Too many tea dates durring chapel hour

have paved this beloved undertread.

I feel alive.

Jesus has come nearer.