Feeling Her Pain

Tori came home from school crying yesterday. Her best friend in class, Isabelle, is being moved to a "new" Kindergarten class that the school is starting because of overcrowding. I felt so sad for her.

In first grade, my best friend at school, Andy, moved away. A couple of years later another best friend, Aaron, moved to Kansas (his family & my family were very close -- in fact, his parents just moved back to Indy where my parents live after being gone over 20 years, and my parents were thrilled).

One of the saddest days of my life was college graduation, mainly because I had to leave my best friends in the world, not knowing if our paths would ever cross again.

In 1996, my college friend Brian moved to New Jersey where I lived. It was great to be back together, but then Rebekah and I moved to New York a few months later.

In 1999 I moved to Vegas and was reunited with my college friends Joe, Ernie, and Doug. Since living here, though, we've seen a lot of friends pack up and head off to other places. Kirk & Jen Rowland helped me start "Apex @ UNLV," then they moved to Pennsylvannia. My office was one foot away from Brent Colbry's office for a year (with no wall between us), and then he moved to Montana. I helped start "Thura" at Andy & Tera Harshman's house, and now they are moving to Arizona. Dave Carder has been a fellow Apex Elder and a partner on the simple church journey, and in January he'll be moving to Iceland.

You think I'd be used to, but I'm not. It's a downer.

So when Tori came home crying, I understood. I felt for her. I knew her pain.