liadanslyre

a post about my friends...

today's chewable vitamin:
"... i think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. he is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze, and our drinks at our elbow; when the whole world , and sometimes beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk... who could have desrved it?"
~ c.s. lewis

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"where are they today?"
a thru i

a. i thought about posting about some of my favorite people from the past ten years and where they are today.
b. i thought about posting about how sad i found the coverage of the michael jackson trial to be.
c. i thought about posting how i seemed to of hit a emotional threshold and can't handle discussing current events w/ people that may disagree w/ me.
d. i thought about posting about why that might be.
e. i thought about posting my top ten off the beat and path things to do in columbus and ask that you share yours.
f. i thought about posting my top five favorite passages in scripture.
g. i thought about posting about congress and how they apologized this week. but then i remembered c-d.
h. i thought about posting a story about when i learned how to drive a land rover defender near the serbian border and how it totally kicked ass.
i. i thought about what i might write in relation to the 10th step experiment.
j. i thought about posting my favorite images from art (across period).

today's topic
a. i thought about posting about some of my favorite people from the past ten years and where they are today.

"where are they today? "

tricia d.:
i became friends w/ tricia working in the residence halls at ohio state. we were both r.a.'s and we were both new christians. we severed ties w/ many of the same entanglements and wanted to impact our friends for jesus. i always felt like tricia was kinda over the top for jesus. it honestly kinda scared me. in hind sight- i know this to be a great goal for me.

tricia is living here in columbus and married to a guy she dated towards the end of college. they have two little girls moriah and seylah. i feel like a schmuck friend b/c i have yet to meet their youngest daughter.

carrie w.:
i like to tell people that i lied to carrie the first significant conversation we shared (this was during a time in my life when i was so profoundly dilluted-i didn't actually know how to tell the truth). i love carrie so much it actually hurts to think about it. i actually grunt sometimes thinking about it. we met and became friends one month after i gave my life to the Lord. let's just say i was a bit of a mess. i had a mouth like a salior (still a work in progress) and i was just completely undone by the direction i had taken my life. she also told me that it was not my responsibility to produce holiness in my life. she explained that my responsibility was to submit to the holy spirit. she loved me- and her love was the first realization that Jesus loved me. i was changed b/c of the expereince. she is a life long friend.

carrie moved from columbus last year to direct the u.s. staffed campus minitry for campus crusade. over the years- we've traveled the world together, lived together and cheered eachother on.

lori a.s.:
lori reads this here blog on occasion. lori and i became friends on a missions trip and our bond was laughter and an east coast accent. her's was authentic and mine was not. lori and i lost touch after college and over the last two years have been back in touch. lori walked w/ me through one of the most pivitol times in my life. infact she helped orchastrate a weekend that helped me flesh out my followership of Jesus. the content of the weekend was that i really got- for the first time- that i had no other choice than to forgive and love my enemy. i got for the first time that this was key to following Jesus.

lori and her husband live in dayton with their two children laniee and johnathan. we i.m. late into the night and those conversation often prove to be the relational highlight to my week.

karen b:
karen was one of the first christians that i met after i became achristian that i felt really 'at home' with. i identified closley with her life expereince and she talked frequently about Jesus in a way that seemed very intimate and attractive to me. she talked about how Jesus was healing her heart. i would listen to her and part of me would think, 'what the hell is she talking about' and the other part would really long for the same experience. she also introduced me to life at vineyard. back in the day when that creepy mime guy was part of worship. we have remained close friends over the years. she has been so great to me and loved me through many different stages of life and friendship.

karen lives here in columbus, is active at our church and works w/ troubled kids.

alana r:
alana and i met when i was a junior and she was a freshman. she was my first jewish friend. she had alcohol poisoning and i took her to the emergency room. i got to share about my expereinces w/ alcohol poisining and how i didn't have to drink every day anymore and how Jesus got the credit for that. later that year; she started calling me in the middle of the night to tell me she couldn't stop reading the bible and how she was staying up all night reading about the life of Jesus. she began to not only like Jesus but love Him. it was very cool to witness. over the next couple of years- we were inseperable.

alana works in the cinicnatti area for an insurance ccompany. i'm not in regular contact w/ her- but i miss her tons. she taught me what it means to count it all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of Jesus.

marsha h.:
marsha and i both lived on south campus and became friends through crusade. somehow- being friends w/ marsha changed my outlook on what was really important in life. our friendship helped to realign me to what Jesus thinks is important. marsha has a wonderful heart and i really appreciate her candor and outlook on life w/ Jesus. she has no pretense to her and it continues to endear me to her.

marsha lives here in columbus and sometimes drives home w/ us after church on saturdays.

the albania years...
john w.:
was an unrequited love who i was paired with to help lead a team for one year in a small east european country named albania. basically- it was hell on earth- emotionally atleast. but knowing john gave me a mold and aspiration of the kind of qualities i decided to pray for in a husband. he was a wonderful friend to me during a very difficult year.

john and his wife live and work in east asia w/ college students. they have a boy caleb and one on the way.

kyla d:
annette a.:
these were my beloved roommates while living in albania. we almost killed eachother. we were the only english speaking women within four hours drive through hairpin turn- mountainous- bunker dotted dis-repair of a country-albania. if there was something to disagree on- we did. but by God's grace we resolved to bring our conflict to a close each time- and these two women and i have formed a friendship that has been tried and will remain. to this day; i consider tham my green baret friends. they would do anything for me and me them. we are in sporadic contact w/ eachother and count one another as friends of a different grade.

kyla and her husband michael moved from chicago after seminary to work in boston at a church. they have two munchkins.

annette and her husband will live in the indianapolis area. they work on a project called the b.u.v. project to help give the three fouth's world a reliable and cost effective way to transport goods to aid in economic viability.

kristen d:
kristen was like a relational life preserver in albania. she lived fourteen (i think) hours from me in a country the size of new jersey. she served to be a wise and willing sounding board for many of the trials and tribulations that i experienced that year. everytime we saw eachother we talked non-stop. she married a guy on her team (dave- who is also my friend) and they lived a number of years in columbus afterwards. we saw eachother often and remained pretty involved in one another's lives. she was so supportive during my dad's illness.

kristen and dave and their three new daughters (triplets!!!!!- gabby, annalise, and sophia) live and work in the cincinnati area as pediatricians.

liz s.:
liz may very possibly be the funniest person i know. she was on kristen and dave's team in the southern portion of albania in a city that was on the border of greece. you know that passage of scripture about out doing eachother in love? well- liz and i tried to do that only w/ humor. she usually won. she actually spit on me once. which is a whole nother story all together. we did have a lot of significant content to our friendship as well. in the summer, we were travel buddies from this small villiage in the albanian alps into the capital tirana to pick up missions trip participants from the airport to our base camp- where they would be based to show the Jesus film. so we generally had good conversation until her motion sickness kicked in and she barfed on me.

liz married a guy named chris and they live and work in scotland with the pca missions board.

cyd kniffen:
cyd was my 'discipler' which is campus crusade lingo for mentor on a summer missions trip in 1993. we remained friends over the years and eventually both ended up in alabania at the same time. cyd ended up serving long term with campus crusade in albania until just recently. she always called me a kindred spirit. that meant alot to me. i looked up to her lots and she really handled me and my heart with mercy and love during a very tender era of my life. i appreciated that she didn't despise my brokeness and somehow identified w/ me. which i didn't feel at the time that it happened very often at all.

she relocated to long island and is newly married to a juliard trained albanian musician.

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these relationships and many like them have been pivotal in my growth as a christian. i wouldn't trade them for the world.