An Unexpected Friendship

Sky Ranch has become a major part of my life and who I am today. Not only has it given me a job to serve and grow God’s kingdom but has also given me my best friend that otherwise I would have never met. The crazy part is that the story doesn’t even start at sky ranch but starts long before that. Little did I know that this friendship would start right here at ETBU. From seeing this person on the quad to even cheering her on by name (without even really knowing her) at basketball games, looking back, this friendship is one that I longed for but didn’t know how bad I wanted and needed it.

Working for marketing at ETBU we are sent out to take photos at events on campus. This night I had signed up for a fan favorite of the campus-wide “Mission Impossible” game. This was always fun to me because we also play a version of this at Sky Ranch. I get my camera and head out into the night to try and capture as many pictures as I could. After doing this for a while I found myself back in the middle of the quad, out of breath, looking at some of the photos I had taken. As I’m standing there I hear a voice in the distance say…” where’s Myrtle?”. This caught my attention because Myrtle is a sky ranch thing. Myrtle is the “villain” that we are trying to defeat when we play this same game at camp. My head quickly shot up to see who would have said that. I see a girl who looked slightly familiar but really had no clue who she was. I commented back something along the lines of “ haha that’s what I’m saying” and didn’t even get the chance to exchange names or even ask how she knew about that. After that, I went on with my life and honesty didn’t give that encounter in the quad much thought.

Time goes on and I start to see that same girl randomly around campus. I would see her doing homework in the student center, walking to class, and even realized she was on the school’s basketball team. My roommate and I would go to games (even though I had no interest in basketball) just to get out and do something exciting. It was then that I started to put some of the pieces together. Her older sister also played basketball and that most recent summer she had worked in Van at Sky Ranch where I also was. I had heard of her sister’s name only because there were very few ETBU students working at camp so you wanted to know who they were. Our paths never crossed that summer but I knew her name and that we went to the same school. What I didn’t know was that she had a younger sister who at the time was a freshman. All these things start clicking and adding up as to why that girl made that comment in the quad. It was her. The younger sister. After finding this out I had this gut feeling that I needed to introduce myself to her the next time I saw her. I saw her many times where it even would have been a perfect time to say hey but I never did. Fear got the best of me every time. Why fear? I have no idea. Time went on and had kinda just given up.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2020 at Sky Ranch. This is my second summer working and I’m much more confident and bold when it comes to talking to people and making new friends. I’m walking around at staff training talking to old friends and making new ones when she shows up again! I go on doing my thing and the next thing I know she’s walking up to me and introducing herself. She shakes my hand and we have the whole fun conversation where she knows who I am kinda and I know who she is kinda and that we should be friends. The connections are finally made and we go on our somewhat separate ways as we work camp. We also happen to be in similar age groups so I would be seeing her around camp a little more than I would others. To attempt to make an already long story short, we only cross paths a few times at camp the rest of that summer but in those few encounters with her, I knew that our friendship would do nothing but grow once we got back to school in the fall. She was so intentional in everything she did and barely knew anything about me but made me feel known as a friend.

Summer ends and we go back to school. We both do our thing for a little while and then our paths cross again. We decide that once a week me and her, plus another friend from camp that also went to ETBU, would meet up for dinner. This quickly became my favorite thing to do every week. We spent time just learning basic facts about each other like where we were from to just exchanging funny stories from the summer. This goes on for about a month. Fast-forward some more and we get to my birthday. I love a good karaoke and dance party and planned to throw one for my birthday party. At this point, we had become good enough friends where I wanted to invite her to come but also kept in mind that she didn’t know my friend group and I didn’t want it to be weird for her. I invite her anyway and thankfully she shows up. I do my thing and entertain my guests by acting a fool like I usually do as she sat quietly in the corner of the room. While most people might have felt awkward in this situation I could see happiness and contentment on her face. She was just happy to be there. The party goes on and we don’t talk much. Things start to die down and my friends start to leave. She, being the person she is, stays behind to help me clean up. After all the partying and cleaning is over I finally go to walk her out. We get out to her car and a quick “thank you” and “goodbye” turns into an hour-long conversation in the parking lot. This conversation is one that did nothing but confirm to me that we needed to be friends. I had this gut feeling about her ever since our encounter in the quad that we needed to be friends. Thankfully that gut feeling became a reality and has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. It’s important to have good friends and I can confidently say that she is not only a good friend but the best friend I have ever had. Not only has she made me feel known and loved but she loves Jesus and her love for Him is so evident. Being friends with her has made me want to look more like Jesus. Those are the types of friends we need.

From a small remark made at a random campus event to now countless conversations held in my room into the late hours of the night, this is a friendship that I have longed for and prayed for. God is good and faithful to answer us but sometimes these answers just get answered in an unexpected way.