I have a crazy story for you.
It was lunchtime a few weeks ago on a workday. I was chasing
the last of my food with my fork when I got an odd text from my friend, Macie.
“Cherise, have you ever been to Pine Cove?”
And then, two seconds later—“And did you ever live at
[insert address]?”
Um…yes. I had been to that family camp many times, but not
since I was in high school. And that was my old address.
Immediately, my mind started running through bizarre
explanations for why she might be asking. Did the camp release some ancient video online that showed pictures of me? Did I lose something at Pine Cove
that had my old address in it? Why would she have it?
The truth was stranger than I guessed.
Macie is the kind of girl to whom encouragement is like air:
she breathes it in eagerly and then exhales it to everyone around her. Just
standing near her is like a fresh breeze to your heart. When I met her, she was
a week away from marrying one of my hubby’s best friends. Our apartments stand
facing each other now across the street, just right for five-minute
conversations if we happen to be getting home at the same time.
Because words hold such weight for her, she has kept a growing
stash of encouragement in a burgeoning drawer somewhere in her house. On the
day of the weird text, she’d been doing some spring cleaning and decided to
sift through a stack of notes from 2003, the year she had become a believer in
Jesus.
One of the notes was from a camper she met while working at
Pine Cove as a counselor. It was written in careful cursive on notebook paper
decorated with gel pen swirls.
It was chatty, talking about summer plans to go camping and about how the writer was about to get her driver's permit. It told Macie she had a beautiful heart and that the note-writer was praying for her.
It was signed, “Cherise Beekman”.
Y’all. That camper was
ME.
It's seriously like a movie! I can picture it in lights: “Girl
discovers that she knew her friend before she really knew her.” We had a first
class freak out on the phone as we uncovered our secret past.
That summer in 2003, my dad had been out of work nearly eight
months. My sweet grandma had died of cancer only a few weeks after the layoff,
and our family had been feeling the strain of change, grief, and uncertainty. Some
kind person paid for us to go to Pine Cove as a family. The counselors were
wonderful—so grown up and so kind to the bony fifteen year old and her three younger
sisters.
One of them was a bouncy person with flaming hair and a big
smile who went by—wait for it—“Hip Hop Anonymous”. Isn’t that a great name for
her?
So our friendship didn’t
actually begin in 2008 when Macie bounced in to Jenny’s apartment with
leftover wedding shower cake to share. In reality, I met Hip Hop Anonymous in
2003, before our husbands ever laid eyes on each other and before Macie ever
joined our church!
God knew we were meant to be friends. J
