sharing life

It feels like freshman year this morning. I'm in my room at my desk and about three feet away my friend Jamie is sleeping and it's raining outside--soft quiet, everything sort of humming. It feels like the dorm in a way our apartment never has. I just got out of the shower and my hair is cool on the back of my neck and I'm in pajamas, sitting here in the quiet and I could spend the whole day like this.

Lindsey--my roommate from freshman year--and I would have days like this all the time. Saturday mornings, particularly. It's different in an apartment, going down to the living room. But I'm trying to type quietly and the sound of it brings me back.

I've seen Lindsey several times this summer, and it's strange thinking back, how different everything was. I think about how well we hit it off at first and then how difficult living together became. There aren't many big things I miss about freshman year, and there certainly aren't with sophomore year, but I remember our mornings and little things, how cold it got, hearing the music from her headphones as she listened to her iPod, and then walking through quiet morning to the dining hall together.

If you'd told me at the end of freshman year how we'd hang out some this summer, I might not believe it. But it's been good. What's funny is that a friend of mine from high school said the same thing to me two nights ago. That he and I would spend the summer in the company of one another and each other's friends, enjoying a very particular friendship, one that runs through places you might not have guessed is a surprise to both of us. But then, our God is in the business of restoring relationships, of healing.

I'm sitting here and I'm wishing that it could be this simple all the time. Jamie sleeping a few feet away, grey quiet morning. The people I care so much about. This is what I want. I want to share life with each other, sitting in the stillness.