Nostalgia

I spent a good part of today sorting through my photo albums. I got my first camera when I was ten and a half, so I've got lots of random pictures - a bunch of which I am tossing. It was a journey to wade through these. I got as far as the summer after high school. The rest can wait for another day.

The things that blessed me so much were when lots of people came to the few parties I had in high school, and when my Christian friends took an interest in my brother. This picture, from my eighteenth birthday, says it all for me:
People were scattered all around my backyard, and this group contained my brother. It reminds me of the time my brother tagged along to a New Years Eve church event and one guy struck up a conversation with him and another told me he wanted to take him out for ice cream sometime, and that meant the world to me. I wanted him to have Christian influences, but I think I also wanted him to see that my friends were cool and thereby validate my own life and choices in his eyes...

Here's some high school music to enjoy:

Jars of Clay, Goodbye Goodnight.
This was one of our options as a grad song. I can't believe that was so long ago.

Looking back, I remember how much fun it was to be part of the youth group and to have a realm where I could feel popular. But now the friends that I miss are the nonChristian group I hung out with. I feel like they were truer friends to me. The wider, the shallower; the fewer, the deeper, I guess. I didn't always know that or value them as I should have. (And perhaps I only remember the good times now and forget how they hurt me.) I'm trying to craft a reconnecting email to them. We'll see how it goes. I'm just wondering how honest I should be, or rather how much I should be honest about. Do I leave it at "everything's good," or do I get into the fact that I am not well? Whoops!! Well, I accidentally just sent the half-finished draft. Boo. That'll teach me to put the email addresses in first. I guess there's no thinking about whether I'm actually ready to send it and fully sincere... It's weird to think that pushing some keyboard buttons and then clicking the send button actually has great power, touching people and making things different. Kinda surreal, kinda scary.

I've been very mindful of the transition out of high school lately because that's what my friend Trevor is going through. He just graduated, and he'll be moving out to go to university in the fall. We haven't talked about it much, but just thinking about what he is going through brings me back to my post-high school experience. I think I cried every day that summer. It's rough growing up. I hope he has an easier time of it. I'm trying to think of advice and freezer meals to send him off with.

I wonder if I could use old pictures as creative note paper...