Saving the Best for Last

I leave tomorrow for my greatest, most adventurous trip this summer. Not because this particular venture will include more exotic meals and fun excursions at the beach than my trip to Savannah did, or because it will be more emotionally and spiritually and physically trying than Belize was, or even because it will be to a more exciting and famous locale than Las Vegas. So, what can possibly make this trip so special? My friend, Meredith. We could sit on her couch in Jackson, Mississippi, the entire weekend, and it'd still be the most adventurous trip this summer. Let me explain, or at least try to.

Meredith came into my life at a point when things were very bleak. I was just, in that last year or so, coming back to a faith that had been foreign to me throughout my college years; I had recently finished my degree and was starting graduate school in a profession that I hated; all of my friends from college all started dating -each other- and got engaged or moved away. It was a lonely time. So one night at RUF at the beginning of that miserable year, I get introduced to this really cute girl named Meredith. We strike up a conversation, and I find out that she's new in town to start her Masters in Journalism, and she officially doesn't know a soul. She recognizes me because I had joined Redeemer the week before (her first Sunday there), and she remembered clinging to the fact that, hey, here was someone who looked about her age... perhaps a future friend? Her biggest concern, at the moment we meet, is that she'll have to go to church alone on Sunday. I offer to swing by her apartment and pick her up. She's delighted, and from that moment on, we are inseparable.

Meredith and I are very different people. I'm a little quiet and uncomfortable with crowds, she's the life of the party. She is, without a doubt, the "funnest" person I've ever been around. She was a Chi-O at Ole Miss and knew the most about how to have a good time than anyone I had ever been around before or have been around since. She would call me, on, like a Monday night, at 11 pm to meet up with the random friends of the year (including two musician brothers and a Canadian named Neil) either at their house or somewhere downtown. And I would go, strangely enough, because she was that compelling.

I mean, heck, Meredith got me, Miss Introvert, into a BOXING RING in the middle of downtown Athens during Athfest one year. We each had two gigantic gloves (probably weighing more than a small automobile apiece) with which to pound each other while standing on that pillowy, blow-up bouncy stuff of fair attractions, and we were surrounded by a large crowd growing ever larger. I'll never forget being laid out on my back on that nasty, smelly floor-of-the-ring, arms spread out because I couldn't lift the gloves up, laughing so hard I was crying and about to pee in my pants, and hearing the redneck lady behind me scream at the top of her lungs to Meredith, "KICK HER A** WHILE SHE'S DOWN, DARLIN'!" That lady was out for blood, I'm telling you. And Meredith yelling back between hiccups of laughter, "NOOO, SHE'S MY FRIEND!!" The guy in charge of the attraction gave us our turn for free because we had created so much publicity and interest.

And, you know?, Meredith was the best thing that could've happened to me at that point in my life. Her boldness and fearlessness and love for life trickled a little into my personality, prompting me to make such crazy and crucial changes as switching my major in the middle of Graduate School. She transferred her strong self-confidence onto mine that had been wounded for so long. She also "taught" me to drink on occasion, which she is mortified about. Such a bad influence, Mere. Tsk Tsk.

Perhaps the aspect of Meredith that I most love, aside from her loyalty and her Faith, is her storytelling. If you ever meet her, get her to tell you about sitting on the second row of the U2 concert after sneaking in because she had, unknowingly, bought a counterfeit ticket from a scalper. Or about how she lost her shoe while walking down the steps of the platform at the front of a church sanctuary full of people where she was a very nervous bridesmaid, and how the groomsman escorting her bent over to rescue the wayward slipper, chivalrously slipping it back onto her foot and rising to bow dramatically in front of an amused and applauding congregation and next to a mortified Meredith. She's never without a story, and, as she weaves her web around a room full of people, her listeners are instantly captured by her lively spirit for forever.

So, even though Elizabeth and I face a long drive to Jackson tomorrow night, we both know it will be worth it. Where will her tales take us this time? Or, more likely and infinitely more exciting, what future stories will we create while we're there?

I love you, Mere. Thanks for the indescribably important role you've played in shaping my life. See you soon!