I Always Picture Her Laughing...

I like to make a point to thank God often for special friendships. I blame it on moving away from everything familiar and safe when I graduated from college and got married. I love making new friends, but nothing replaces those solid, "been through it all" friends.
Friendship. It comes in the most unlikely places. God has blessed me with a handful of long-lasting friendships and my heart swells with pride when I think of each one of them. One of those beautiful friends is, Paige.
We met one another while working at a fitness center in our last year of college. I knew who she was. She was Miss. Conway…and the chance of making this girl a friend of Abby Jo's was well….slim! God had other plans. We became instant friends the first night I folded towels with her at the front desk of the gym. We found out we had the same major, same quirks, same sense of humor, same faith, some of the same friends and we wore the same Conway Regional Lands End polo three or four days a week.
We had different circles of friends. She was big into Greek life on campus and I was big into escaping campus as soon as I could each day. We connected though. We even made the Conway Regional newsletter with a funny write up on our abdominal routine. It was most funny and our proudest highlight. I would give anything to workout with her everyday. She had me in the best shape of my life. Anyway, we had good times.
When I think of Paige I see her laughing. That is pretty neat. How many people do you picture laughing when you think of them? I can only think of a few and her laughter is one of my most favorite.
We have shared many ups and downs with one another over the past seven years. She listened as I cried, I listened as she cried and then we laughed about it afterwards. She sang my "life song" (while playing it on the piano) at my wedding. It meant the world to me. I regret having a huge misunderstanding with her last summer while she was preparing for her wedding, Yet I am so glad we worked it out before Christmas. It was one of my best presents this past Christmas season. I think we are deeper, stronger friends now. I get sad when I think about missing seven months of her life and her missing seven months of mine. We got caught up though and it was good times. I am so excited about a lifetime of laughter with my beautiful friend, Paige.

This is one of my favorite pictures of us. We were leaving Destin and headed to Memfrica after a long weekend with the JAPA's (a special group of college girlfriends…Jenny, Ashlea, Paige and Abby) and almost missed our flight because we were being our high maintenance selves. I almost always wet my pants talking about it. We sprinted through the airport barefoot with our flip -flops in hand, trying to catch our plane….I am laughing out loud as I type. "Love It" …"Shut It!"

Nothing like a good and warm fuzzy post for a cold, miserable day.

Abby